


How to Make Spaghetti

by kaliawai512



Series: It's Raining [6]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Cinnamon Roll Papyrus, Emotional Manipulation, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Papyrus Knows More Than He Lets On, Papyrus Needs A Hug, Sans loves his brother, a little rough around the edges, and Papyrus is an amazing one, and not in the best ways, but he tries too hard to protect him, but she's a good friend, seriously a lot of ANGST, undyne is a good friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-10 05:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 43,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14730560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaliawai512/pseuds/kaliawai512
Summary: When Papyrus is nine years old, he meets his best friend. When Undyne is twenty-three, she meets hers.The story of a friendship that stretches across two universes, twists, and changes, but never, ever breaks.(Part of theIt's Rainingseries. Prequel and sequel toIt's Raining Right Here.)





	1. Papyrus and Undyne (Part I)

**Author's Note:**

> Just to be entirely clear, this story begins in the _alternate_ Papyrus's universe - though it doesn't end there.
> 
> Fairly graphic violence later in the story - probably still fits within the T rating, but there is a chance I may bump it up to M.
> 
> Note that Mettaton is very briefly mentioned in this story _before_ he has come out, so he is referred to without a name and using "they" pronouns (as in the game - Undyne once refers to Napstablook's disappeared cousin, presumably Mettaton, as "they," since no one seemed to know his preferred pronouns before he got his robot body).

Everyone always thought that Sans was his older brother.

Papyrus thought that was funny. After all, he had always been taller than Sans, at least for as long as he could remember, and besides they were almost certainly exactly the same age.

They weren’t sure, though. They hadn’t celebrated their birthday in years. Maybe Sans _was_ older, and everyone else just knew something that they didn’t.

He would have asked Dr. Japer, but she didn’t like when they asked questions about what had happened before they started living with her.

He was pretty sure Sans remembered more about that time than he did, but he didn’t like to talk about it either.

So Papyrus tried to figure it out on his own. It wasn’t height, that was obvious. It wasn’t the way they talked—Sans knew a lot of big words, but he didn’t use them most of the time—and it wasn’t the way they dressed—Sans barely remembered to put on pants some mornings. Maybe because Sans was really good at science stuff? Maybe … but probably not. Sans didn’t do science stuff around most people. He liked reading science books at home, but he didn’t talk to other people about them. Maybe because most people didn’t like science stuff like he did. Or maybe because he was too busy.

It wasn’t about how strong they were, because Papyrus was stronger. It wasn’t about how much they talked, because Papyrus usually talked more. It wasn’t about how good they were at acting grown-up, because Papyrus had read a book on how to act like a grown-up, he had read it _seven times,_ and Sans had never even looked at it.

Maybe it was because Papyrus liked toys more than Sans. Sans hadn’t played with toys in a long, long time, and Papyrus didn’t have very many toys, but the ones he did, he liked. He didn’t know why that meant he was younger. Grown-ups had things they liked to do. Why couldn’t he like toys? No, that couldn’t be it. It had to be something else.

Maybe they thought Sans was older because he had a job?

It wasn’t a very big job. No one would hire Sans for a full-time job—especially because he had only been eight when he got it, and the adult monsters insisted he should focus on school and playing and normal kid stuff—and especially not one who was so … well … small. Papyrus didn’t think there was anything wrong with being small, or having low HP, but apparently grown-ups thought it mean he would break easily. One of their neighbors had once warned Papyrus not to play too roughly with his brother, or he might hurt him.

Papyrus had never really played rough with Sans before, but from then on, every time he went to hug him, he made sure to check to make sure his HP hadn’t fallen.

It never did. 1 HP even. Just like it had been for as long as he could remember.

Papyrus kept checking, just in case.

But even though Sans couldn’t be hired for a big job, he still had a job. For over a year now, every day after school, and on a lot of the weekends, he would help out at the library. It was a good job for him. Sans liked reading—as long as the books were about something he liked—and the librarian let him check out more books than anyone else, which meant Papyrus got a much wider variety of bedtime stories. It was quiet, it was safe, and he seemed to like it. Probably. Sans tried very hard to hide when he didn’t like something, but Papyrus could usually tell.

Papyrus wondered, a while after the thought first came to him, whether people would think he was older if he got a job. He had asked Sans about it, but Sans had brushed him off, insisting that he didn’t need to work, it was fine, Sans was making plenty of money—even though Papyrus didn’t know for sure what he needed to make money for. He had said, once, that he was saving up for a house, but they already _had_ a house. Dr. Japer’s house. They had food and clothes and their own rooms and some toys. Not a lot. But they had some.

And they had Dr. Japer to buy things they needed. She had always bought them what they needed—for as long as Papyrus could remember, anyway. She didn’t even complain about it.

She didn’t like spending time with them, but she would buy them things. She didn’t like talking to them more than she had to, but she made sure they had the “essentials,” as she called them. Sometimes she looked at them like she was angry, or sad, and it didn’t make sense and it made Papyrus feel uncomfortable … but she didn’t _say_ anything mean to them. And she still let them live with her. They didn’t need another place to live.

But there were a lot of things Sans didn’t explain to Papyrus, and Papyrus had learned a long time ago that sometimes it just wasn’t worth asking.

Still, it was lonely around the house, when both Dr. Japer and Sans were at work, especially since they worked on some of the weekends, too. Sometimes Papyrus would sit around his room playing with his toys or reading his books or even cleaning the house, but sometimes he went off on his own. Sometimes just around Snowdin. Sometimes further. He got nervous if he went further, and he knew Sans worried if he went too far and didn’t get back fast enough. But he had seen almost every part of Snowdin by now, and sometimes, he just couldn’t resist looking at something new.

So early on one Saturday afternoon, when the house was too quiet and Snowdin was a little too dull, he started off along the river into Waterfall.

He liked Waterfall. It was pretty, and even though there weren’t many people, he always saw a few new faces, and when he waved, they usually waved back. There were a few … weird people, but weird was okay.

Today there was hardly anyone. He passed by a ghost and tried to wave at them, but they made a nervous sound and disappeared before he could say a word. He had met a ghost here before, about a year ago, and they hadn’t been nervous—after he introduced himself, they talked for thirty minutes straight without letting Papyrus get in a word. Papyrus had been a little annoyed at the time, but listening to someone talk too much was much better than not hearing them talk at all.

After that, there was no one. So he just walked. He didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t know what he was looking for. He walked, and he looked around, and he took in all the new sights and sounds and smells and did his best to appreciate the thrill of something _new._

It wasn’t until he had been in Waterfall for more than an hour that he realized he was lost.

Well. Not … _extremely_ lost, but … sort of lost. He knew he was in Waterfall, so that was something. He just … didn’t know this part of Waterfall, or how to get to Snowdin or Hotland, and he thought he could ask Mr. Gerson but he didn’t know where his house was or if he was even _at_ his house and he didn’t know anyone else who lived around here.

He didn’t have a map. Or a phone. And … there was no one around him that he could ask.

It was … quiet. Empty. Lonely.

And dark.

Waterfall was always kind of dark, and usually he didn’t mind it, but now … now it felt a little scary.

He ground his teeth and fidgeted with the hem of his shirt. For a minute, he stood there, not moving, just looking around to try to figure out where he was. It didn’t help. So finally, he took a deep breath and took a step forward. Then another. And another.

He had to reach the end of Waterfall at some point, right?

Then … then he could find his way home.

He nodded to himself and kept walking, wandering around corners and through empty hallways. He held his head high, but he still felt a little scared. His footsteps made more noise than anything around him, except for the faint sound of water dripping in the distance. No other voices. Not even breaths.

He wished Sans was here.

After a while, when he was wringing his hands and grinding his teeth and the sound of his footsteps was starting to become almost deafening, he began to hum.

It was quiet at first, but soon he got louder, louder and louder and it was easier to walk when he was humming, easy to forget the silence, easy to forget how alone he was. He even smiled a little, shifting his weight from side to side as he made up a little song. He opened his mouth and let the words fall out, matching up to the tune.

“MY NAME IS PAPYRUS AND I HAVE A BROTHER NAMED SANS, he started. “WE ARE BOTH SKELETONS AND WE … ALWAYS WEAR PANTS!”

That rhymed, right? Even if it wasn’t true. For Sans, at least. Papyrus definitely wore pants.

He hummed a little louder, grinning as he did a little twirl.

“WE ARE THE BEST BROTHERS YOU HAVE EVER MET, AND I KNOW THAT BECAUSE I HAVE MET A LOT! SANS DOES LOTS OF SCIENCE AND I DO LOTS OF PUZZLES AND TOGETHER WE ARE—”

“Hey! Who’s makin’ all that racket?”

Papyrus froze.

He stood there for a moment, looking to his left, then to his right. He didn’t see anybody. But somebody had definitely spoken. Well … it could have been an echo flower, but … that was pretty loud. And it sounded very real.

“UM … ME?” he replied, carefully.

He heard something that sounded like squishing in the mud, some distance behind him. He turned around just in time to see someone poke their—her?—head out from behind a corner, leading into what looked like a small room, and shoot him a glare.

“Well, can it back there! Some of us are trying to take a nap!”

Yes, that was a girl. Probably. She sounded like a girl. She stepped out from behind the wall to cross her arms over her chest. Yeah, probably a girl.

He tilted his head. “BUT … YOU’RE OUTSIDE.”

“Yeah, so?” she spat back, glaring harder.

Papyrus fidgeted.

“WHY ARE YOU SLEEPING OUTSIDE?” he asked, even though her glare was quite intimidating and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what this girl looked like when she was angry rather than irritated. “DO YOU NOT HAVE A HOUSE TO GO BACK TO?”

“‘Course I got a house to go back to! I just … don’t feel like going there right now,” she shot back, and he thought she sounded defensive, but he didn’t say anything about it. She scowled a little harder and waved him off. “Now scram. I’m trying to sleep.”

She started to turn back around the corner, but Papyrus found his feet moving before he could think, carrying him across the room, toward her.

“CAN I SIT NEXT TO YOU IF I’M REALLY REALLY QUIET?”

She stopped. She looked over her shoulder and gave him a long, funny look, her forehead scrunched and her lips poking out in a thoughtful pout. Finally, she shrugged, and kept on walking.

“Whatever,” she called back, without stopping. “Do what you want.”

Papyrus straightened, and felt a smile tugging at his mouth even as he ran after her.

The room she was napping in was pretty small, and there wasn’t anything in it. She didn’t have a blanket or pillow. She just laid down right on the ground, even though it was a little wet, and put her arms behind her head. It looked uncomfortable, but she looked okay, so Papyrus ran across the room, dropped to the ground, and laid down next to her. She gave him another funny look, but didn’t say anything about it.

She closed her eyes and out a long breath, settling into the ground.

Papyrus fidgeted, then cleared his throat.

“MY NAME’S PAPYRUS.”

She cracked one eye open and looked at him without turning her head. “Undyne.”

Papyrus beamed.

“THAT’S A GREAT NAME! I’VE NEVER MET SOMEONE WITH THAT NAME BEFORE.”

“Of course you haven’t,” she said, as if it should have been obvious. “It’s _mine._ Do you know any other Papyruses?”

“NO,” Papyrus replied. “MY BROTHER SAID WE HAVE SKELETON NAMES AND THERE AREN’T ANY OTHER SKELETONS SO NO ONE ELSE CAN HAVE OUR NAMES.”

He didn’t think he had said anything bad, but Undyne winced and tilted her head away. He wondered if he should apologize. He opened his mouth and started to, then stopped. He had said he would be quiet, after all.

A minute passed in silence, but this time, it was Undyne who opened her eyes and turned to look at him again.

“How old are you, anyway?”

Papyrus perked up. He had heard this question often enough, at least, and the answer had never made anyone upset.

“I’M NINE AND TWO MONTHS! HOW OLD ARE YOU?”

Something in her expression changed, just a little. Her brow furrowed, and when she spoke again, it was a little quieter than before.

“Thirteen.”

“WOW!” he burst, eyes wide. “THAT’S OLD!”

She frowned. He tried to keep smiling, but it was hard when she was staring at him so hard. “You’re a weird kid.”

Papyrus’s shoulders fell.

“OH … SORRY.”

“Why are you apologizing?” she asked, making him blink. “It’s not bad to be weird. I’m weird. Cool people are weird.”

Papyrus stared at her for a second. It took a long, long time for the words to sink into his head.

“I’M … COOL?”

“Sure. I guess,” Undyne said, as if it didn’t matter, but at the same time as if it mattered a lot. He kept staring at her, his eyes wide, his chest warmer than it had been in a long, long time. She huffed and closed her eyes again, settling back into the ground. “I thought you were gonna shut up and let me sleep.”

Papyrus tensed.

“OH! OF COURSE! I’LL BE QUIET! RIGHT NOW!”

She hummed, but didn’t say anything else. After a few seconds, she relaxed again, as if she might really fall asleep. Papyrus shifted against the muddy ground beneath him. He fiddled with his fingers, hands resting on his ribcage. He listened to the dripping of water somewhere out in the distance.

Then his mouth opened.

“SO DO YOU LIVE IN WATERFALL?”

Undyne’s groan echoed all around the walls.

* 

He didn’t see her again for another two weeks.

At first, he didn’t think he would see her again at all. They had talked for a while, but she hadn’t acted like she wanted to see him again when she said goodbye. She had just waved and wandered off, leaving him by himself. But he felt a little better having talked to her, and managed to find Mr. Gerson and get directions back to Snowdin.

He didn’t realize that he had stayed out past dinner until he got back to the house, and he swore Sans had been crying when he finally walked in the door, and he hugged him so tight it hurt. Papyrus apologized, and said that he had just lost track of time, but Sans shook his head and hugged him tighter still.

Sans reheated his plate for him. Papyrus thought Dr. Japer might have been worried, too, but Sans said that she had gone back to work in her office as soon as she finished eating. She came out a while later, while Sans and Papyrus were still at the table, and he thought she looked a little relieved to see him. But she didn’t say anything. She just grabbed a cup of coffee and went back to her office.

He thought about telling Dr. Japer about Undyne, but she never seemed particularly interested in the things he liked to talk about. She didn’t actually say it, but she was clear enough without having to use words.

Sometimes he wasn’t sure whether Dr. Japer liked him or not. She didn’t seem to _hate_ him, but she … didn’t seem very fond of him either.

Sometimes he thought she was mad at him, even though she didn’t raise her voice, even though he didn’t know what he had done wrong. Sometimes she was saying something and it didn’t seem mean but then Sans pulled him away and started muttering about how much he hated her.

Papyrus didn’t think it was nice to hate people, but he knew by now that he wasn’t going to change Sans’s mind.

They had lived with her for as long as Papyrus could remember, but he knew that wasn’t forever. Sans said he remembered what it was like before, but he didn’t talk about it much. He said, once, that they had lived with their dad, but he didn’t tell him his name or what he was like and he told Papyrus that he should never bring him up to Dr. Japer.

Papyrus did, once, on accident.

After seeing the look on her face, he wasn’t going to do it again.

They lived with Dr. Japer, and she didn’t seem … _mad_ about them being there. She didn’t seem … _anything_ about them being there. She acted a little like they had to live there with her, like none of them had a choice, and she didn’t really like it but she was just going to deal with it anyway.

Sometimes, she would look at him, and he thought that he saw something like affection in her eyes. But it was always gone before he could get a good look, and it was rare, so he could never decide whether or not he was just making it up.

He did tell Sans about Undyne, though. He told him everything he could remember, everything they had talked about, everything she had done. He thought, maybe, that if he said it all out loud, it would help him remember it. It would make it more real.

Sans looked happy. He looked tired, like he always did after a long day of work. But he looked happy.

He wanted to go back to Waterfall the next day, but Sans was still worried that he would get lost, so they spend Sunday—Sans’s day off, usually—playing board games in his room, and Papyrus was too busy with school the rest of the week to go back. The following Saturday, he got a map of Waterfall from the library and carried it with him as he walked around, but when he finally made it to the room where he had met her before, she wasn’t there.

He waited for her. He waited for what felt like a long time. But she didn’t come.

He tried not to feel disappointed as he walked back home. Maybe … maybe she was just busy. Maybe she didn’t come to that spot very much.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see him again. It … it wasn’t. Surely.

He told himself that the whole way back, but the words in his head still felt forced even as he walked through the door.

He tried very hard not to think about Undyne over the next week. He didn’t talk to Sans about her. He had never even told Dr. Japer that he met her. He went about his day, going to school, doing his homework, playing with his games and toys and wandering around Snowdin and trying not to be really, really bored when he was home alone.

Then Saturday arrived again.

And Papyrus found himself walking toward Waterfall almost before he knew what he was doing.

He didn’t think about whether she would be there. Or … well, he tried really, _really_ hard not to think about whether she would be there. And he managed it. Mostly.

He was just trying to distract himself by thinking about different-shaped marshmallows when he walked into the room where he had found her two weeks before and found it occupied.

By a girl.

A girl sitting on the ground, facing away from him, with scaly blue skin and a long red ponytail.

Papyrus’s face it up.

“OH! HELLO!”

She stiffened, whipping around before her eyes landed on him. She paused, blinking, before her shoulders fell and her eyes narrowed.

“Oh. It’s you.”

“YES! IT’S ME! AND IT’S YOU! AND WE’RE BOTH HERE AGAIN!” he said, running across the room to stand in front of her. She still hadn’t gotten up, and if he looked closer at the ground he could see an Undyne-shaped imprint there, as if she had been lying down for a while. “DO YOU TAKE NAPS HERE A LOT?”

Undyne gave him a funny look, then pushed herself up, brushing the dirt off her pants. “I don’t actually nap much. I was just taking a break after training.”

She rolled her shoulders back, and for the first time he noticed how muscular her arms were. Not the most muscular he had ever seen, but he knew that just because you didn’t have muscles everyone could see, that didn’t mean they weren’t there. His arms and Sans’s were the same size, but Papyrus knew he was much stronger than his brother.

“ARE YOU REALLY STRONG?” he asked.

Undyne’s lips spread into a wide, slightly nerve-wracking grin.

“I’m the _strongest._ King Asgore _himself_ is training me, and soon I’ll learn how to beat him, too. But I’m already stronger than everybody else. And I’ll prove that to anybody, anytime!”

And over the next five minutes, she did.

Papyrus had never met anyone who could knock him over in twenty-seven different ways, then pick up a huge rock and throw it all the way across the room, but when he said that out loud, Undyne just laughed and told him that of course he hadn’t. He had never met her.

She seemed more relaxed this time as they talked, moving on from subject to subject, even though it was mostly him asking her questions about herself. She didn’t sound annoyed, even a little bit—except the time she asked him about his family and he started talking about Sans and he went on and on about all his favorite things about his brother and his least favorite things about his brother and she finally stopped him and told him he had been talking for ten minutes straight.

He didn’t know how long he stayed there, though he was more aware of the time passing, if only because he didn’t want to scare Sans again. But when it finally got so late that he thought he should head home … it was harder than he had expected.

Because Undyne didn’t seem to want to leave, and it had been a long, long time since someone had wanted to spend time with him so much that they didn’t say goodbye before he did.

He had to try three times before she realized that he really meant he had to go, and three more times before she actually let him go. Just before he walked off, she punched him in the shoulder and told him not to trip over anything on the way home, and he told her, without thinking, to make sure not to hurt any rocks she threw across the room. She laughed. It was nice sound.

He was smiling the whole way home, and even when Dr. Japer didn’t come to dinner, even when Sans wasn’t in the mood to talk, his smile didn’t go away.

* 

He wasn’t sure when it turned into a routine.

Neither of them had ever planned to start meeting up—not out loud. But when Papyrus came back to the spot in Waterfall a few days later, after school, she was there, and again the next day, and the following weekend, and over and over again, even as the time went by. Every weekend. Then every other day. Then every day, after they got out of school, or on the weekends as soon as they woke up. Papyrus wasn’t sure if she had already been coming there that often before they met. He didn’t ask.

He hadn’t been paying much attention to the date when he first met her, but he was pretty sure it had been a few months, and even though she sometimes acted annoyed when he talked a lot, she still hadn’t told him to go away. Some of the time … _most_ of the time, he thought … she actually looked happy to see him.

One time, when he was too busy with homework to go meet her, she looked mad the next day. He was scared at first, scared she hadn’t wanted him to come back, but she had just glared at him and told him she had thought something bad happened and she didn’t know where to find him or who to ask and it was really, really rude of him not to call and _tell_ her he wouldn’t be coming.

There was a very, very long pause—filled with more glaring on her part—before Papyrus told her that he would have called her, if he had had her phone number.

Undyne stiffened, and her cheeks went a little read. Then she huffed and looked away, pulling a piece of paper out of her backpack and scratching out a number before shoving it in his hands.

That was the day they told each other where their houses were, too, just in case. They had never visited, but there was something reassuring, at least for Papyrus, about knowing that he could find her even if she didn’t show up at their meeting spot.

It wasn’t long after that that Undyne first called him her friend.

It was a casual thing to her, he was pretty sure. She didn’t make anything of it. She just said it in a sentence like she would any other word and kept on talking, as if he wasn’t staring at her with eyes so wide they almost hurt. He swallowed back the tears in his throat before they could grow in his eyes, because he wasn’t going to cry, he _wasn’t_ going to cry, especially not in front of Undyne and he didn’t know why he wanted to cry when he felt happy, so happy, happier than he’d ever felt.

Undyne didn’t notice the tears, but she commented, a while later, that she had never met anyone who could smile so big.

It sounded like a compliment.

Nothing changed after that. Not on the outside, at least. They went back to doing what they had been doing before, and Papyrus found himself thinking that maybe, just maybe, she had been thinking of him as a friend for a while. Maybe they had been friends this whole time and she had just never said it. Did friends usually say it? The book on friends he had read last year didn’t say anything about that/ Maybe … maybe she had really been having as much fun as he had. Maybe she had just never said anything because she thought it was obvious.

He wanted to cry when he realized that, too.

He didn’t cry. But Undyne kept commenting on his smile.

He was still smiling a week later, when he got to the room to find her waiting just outside of it, covered in something wet and red. As soon as she saw him, she waved him along, down the hall, and he followed, staring at the red stuff and trying to figure out what it was. Undyne didn’t say anything, so he waited, walking after her, until they finally stepped into a much larger room, with a small pond taking up half of the floor. He stopped near the wall, and when she walked toward the water, still not saying a word to him, he finally opened his mouth.

“DID YOU PAINT SOMETHING AT SCHOOL TODAY?”

Undyne furrowed her brow and blinked, then looked down at herself and chuckled, wiping a bit of the red stuff from her arm with her finger and sticking it in her mouth.

“Nah, the spaghetti sauce I was making exploded on me again. Wanted to clean it off before I got it everywhere,” she said, taking another swipe of the sauce and shrugging. “Ah, well. At least it wasn’t that hot this time. Still got all over the kitchen, though.”

“AND YOU,” Papyrus added.

Undyne smirked. “Yeah.”

She walked over to the pond and began washing the rest of it off of her arms and face. He was pretty sure her clothes would need to be scrubbed, but she didn’t seem to mind. She never seemed to mind getting dirty, really.

“I DIDN’T KNOW YOU COULD COOK,” he said as she turned around, soaking wet but mostly clean.

“I’m learning,” she replied, shrugging again before she beamed that wide, toothy grin. “And I’m doing awesome! That darn sauce is out to get me.”

Papyrus wasn’t sure why spaghetti sauce would be out to get her, but he didn’t say anything about it.

“HOW ARE YOU LEARNING?” he asked.

Undyne stood up a little taller and put her hands on her lips, flashing him a wide, proud grin.

“On my own!” she said. Her arms dropped down to her sides, and for a second, just a second, she looked a little sad. But then it was gone, as if it had never been there, and she was smiling just as wide again. “My parents are out a lot, so I got the house to myself most of the time. Might as well figure out how to use those cookbooks! And improve the recipes, while I’m at it!”

Papyrus couldn’t get the little touch of sadness in her eyes out of his head, but he didn’t think she would want to talk about it, so he did his best to pretend he hadn’t seen it.

Instead, he stood up a little taller himself, matching her grin.

“CAN YOU TEACH ME?”

Undyne blinked. “Huh?”

“CAN YOU TEACH ME HOW TO COOK?” Papyrus repeated, and he tried, very, very hard, to sound as confident as he wanted to be.

Undyne looked at him for a moment. Then her brow smoothed out and she shrugged.

“Uh … sure, I guess,” she said. Then her lips quirked up, quickly curling into a full-sized grin. “Why not? Let’s do it!”

Papyrus beamed. “REALLY?!”

“Yeah!” she said, smacking his arm so hard it hurt. “Come by my house this weekend, we’ll have your first lesson!”

“OH YAY!” Papyrus squealed.

Before he could think better of it, he threw himself forward and tackled her in a hug. She stumbled at first, then straightened, staring down at him before laughing. She hugged him with one arm and noogied him with the other, and even though her knuckles made his skull ache, he found he didn’t mind. He just kept giggling and smiling and hugging her as tight as he could.

To the best of his knowledge, it was the first time someone had ever agreed to teach him something when they didn’t have to.

*

The first cooking lesson was … very interesting.

They spent all of the following Saturday at Undyne’s house. Undyne got out a big fat cookbook and immediately flipped to the spaghetti page, which was already covered in drops of sauce. Within a minute, she was barking orders and pointing from item to item, telling him what to grab and where to put it and what to do. It was fast, it was tough, and it was, he found, really, really fun.

At first, he thought that maybe cooking really was as easy as she made it look. Just throwing everything in a pot and turning up the heat. Hotter. And hotter. And hotter after that, so hot that he worried that the stove was getting uncomfortable.

Then the pot of sauce exploded.

And he wondered if maybe cooking was a little more difficult after all.

Undyne spat and cursed, but soon, she was laughing and pointing at his face and telling him how ridiculous he looked, covered in sauce, and he pouted and, on a whim, picked up some sauce from the floor and threw it at her head.

They spent the next ten minutes throwing sauce at each other, and the next two hours scrubbing the kitchen clean.

Well. Papyrus did more of the scrubbing. He was good at scrubbing. But Undyne helped, when she wasn’t licking the sauce off the walls.

He stayed there until late afternoon, when Undyne said that she had a school project to do—the face she made when she said this was probably the most interesting face he had ever seen her make. She noogied his skull and waved him off when he left, and he spent the whole walk home smiling wider than he had in a long time.

He was still smiling when he walked in the front door.

It was … stranger than he remembered, coming home to a silent house.

Sans should be home now. He got out of work at four on Saturdays, if Papyrus remembered right, so he was probably in his room. Papyrus turned toward the kitchen when he heard the sound of someone shuffling around inside.

He perked up, and before he could think, he was crossing the living room and stepping into the kitchen.

Sure enough, there was Dr. Japer, standing in front of the stove, chopping vegetables and adding them to a pot. Papyrus stood there for a moment, watching, fidgeting, before he finally cleared his throat.

“DR. JAPER?”

Dr. Japer stopped, furrowed her brow, and turned to him.

“Yes, Papyrus?” she asked, sounding tired.

Papyrus glanced at the vegetables left to chop on the cooking board. “DO YOU NEED HELP WITH DINNER?”

Dr. Japer looked at him for a second, then sighed and turned back to the food.

“No, thank you, I’m fine.”

She started chopping again without waiting for him to respond. He stood there, fidgeting, grinding his teeth a little.

“I’M LEARNING HOW TO COOK,” he went on at last, a hesitant smile curling up his mouth. She stopped chopping and looked at him, and he smiled a little wider. “I CAN HELP YOU.”

Dr. Japer pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes.

“I told you, Papyrus, I don’t need help. Go play somewhere else. You’re not helping me by getting in my way.”

Papyrus flinched, just a little, as she returned to the vegetables.

Normally he would wait a little while after she looked away. He didn’t know why. She never looked back. Sometimes he thought that she might turn back, she might change her mind. She might say something nice instead of something mean.

He didn’t wait this time. He turned around and walked up the stairs without another word.

He knocked on Sans’s door, but didn’t wait for a response before he stepped inside. He never waited for Sans to respond. If Sans didn’t want anyone to come in, he locked his door, but when Papyrus turned the knob, it opened easily, and he found Sans sitting on the edge of his bed, reading a book.

He looked up and gave a slightly wider smile.

“hey, bro.”

He sounded tired. He _looked_ tired. And being around all these tired people made Papyrus feel tired, too.

“HI, SANS,” he said, closing the door behind him.

“have fun today?”

“HM?” Papyrus asked, blinking for a moment before he realized what his brother was asking. “OH. YES. IT WAS GOOD.”

“cool,” Sans replied, before looking back to his reading.

Papyrus sat down on the edge of Sans’s bed, and Sans kept his eyes on his book, unbothered. They didn’t sit together as often as they used to, but they still did sometimes. Usually when the house felt especially empty, or when Dr. Japer seemed especially upset. They hadn’t shared a bed in two years. Before that, they had always slept together, and before that … before that, he had the odd memory of sleeping next to two people, one much bigger than him and his brother, holding them both tight.

He had brought it up to Sans once, but Sans looked sad, and a little bit angry, so Papyrus let it go.

They sat there for at least five minutes, neither of them saying anything. Sans read his book—something about physics, probably, though Papyrus wasn’t sure—and Papyrus fiddled with the hem of his shirt, trying to keep his mind on how much fun he had had with Undyne, how much fun they would probably have again. Maybe even without covering the kitchen in sauce. But his thoughts kept slipping, and finally, he found his mouth opening, almost without his permission.

“SANS?” Papyrus asked, more quietly than he had spoken in a while.

Sans looked up. “hm?”

Papyrus ground his teeth and fidgeted.

“DID I DO SOMETHING WRONG?”

Sans furrowed his browbone in the closest thing he could manage to a frown. “what makes you think that?”

“DR. JAPER SEEMS MAD AT ME,” Papyrus replied. He looked down at his hands in his lap and fidgeted some more. “DID I DO SOMETHING TO MAKE HER MAD?”

There was silence for a few seconds, before Papyrus finally looked back up at his brother. Sans’s eyelights had gone dim, distant, and his smile looked almost pained.

“nah, bro. you didn’t do anything.”

Papyrus got the feeling there was more to the answer than that. But Sans was staring at the wall again, his eyes heavy and sad, so Papyrus didn’t ask again.

They sat there for another half hour, until Dr. Japer called them down for dinner. Neither of them spoke while sitting on the bed, and they said nothing as they ate.

Papyrus felt his eyes drifting to Dr. Japer every minute or so, but as usual, she kept her eyes firmly on the plate in front of her, as if they weren’t there.

He found himself thinking that even if the food in front of them had been made by someone with far more experience, and even if it hadn’t been spilled on the floor, the pot of exploded sauce still tasted better.

* 

Papyrus didn’t know exactly what day he had met Undyne, but that didn’t stop him from celebrating their one-year friendversary.

He just … wasn’t sure whether the date was accurate. But it was close. And maybe he didn’t actually _call_ it their friendversary. He didn’t need to. But he asked if they could hang out on Saturday and she shrugged and said, “Sure, we always do,” and that was good enough for him.

He told himself he would tell her on their two-year friendversary.

Then he realized that he would have known her for two whole years, he would have been her friend for _two whole years,_ and he had to stop himself from crying.

They didn’t spend the day any differently than usual. Papyrus thought that maybe they should do something special, but then Undyne started talking about the things she had learned in training and new spaghetti recipes she had been trying out, and Papyrus decided that there was no better way to celebrate their friendship than by spending the day just like they always did.

So they talked. They ran around the room and waded around a nearby pond and played with the echo flowers, but mostly they just talked. Undyne lay on the floor, exactly how Papyrus had first found her, and Papyrus lay next her, and they talked.

Undyne talked, and then Papyrus talked, and sometimes they talked over each other and laughed when they said the same thing or something totally different at once, and it was comfortable and easy and perfect and all he had ever wanted.

Until it wasn’t.

“—AND NO ONE THOUGHT HE COULD DO IT BUT SANS STILL DID IT, HE WAS THE ONLY KID THEY REMEMBER THAT EVER FIGURED IT OUT AND ALL THE TEACHERS SAID HE WAS THE SMARTEST KID THEY’D EVER SEEN AND HE JUST SHRUGGED! HE SHRUGGED! LIKE IT WAS NOTHING! AND THEY WANTED TO GIVE HIM A MEDAL BECAUSE NO KID EVER SOLVED THAT PUZZLE BEFORE BUT HE—”

“Why do you talk like that?”

Papyrus stopped, his mouth still open, the words ready to fall out of his mouth. Then he turned his head, looked to Undyne, and blinked.

“LIKE WHAT?”

Undyne tried to make some sort of hand gesture, like she couldn’t figure out how to say what she wanted to say using words, but after a few seconds she gave up and huffed.

“Like … I don’t know.” She crossed her arms and shrugged. “It’s like you’re shouting even when you’re whispering. Even if it’s not that loud. Like …”

She trailed off, furrowing her brow. Papyrus waited for her to think about it, but as much as Undyne liked to talk she could also think for a really, really long time, and by the time she was done thinking she had usually forgotten what they were talking about, so instead he poked her in the arm and she jerked her head up to face him.

“SANS SAID IT’S CALLED UPPERCASING,” he said with a small, helpful smile.

Undyne blinked. “Huh?”

Maybe she had already forgotten what they were talking about. But … no, she didn’t look like she did when she got really _really_ off-track. So Papyrus smiled a little wider, holding himself taller. He liked being able to tell her things she didn’t know.

“HE READ ABOUT IT. UPPERCASING AND LOWERCASING.”

She frowned. She looked … thoughtful again, but in a different way than before. She turned away for a second, fidgeted, then cleared her throat.

“Is it a … skeleton thing?”

Undyne always seemed hesitant before asking about anything related to skeletons. He still wasn’t sure why, and he wasn’t sure how to ask. So instead he just kept smiling and hoped, really hoped, that that would make her feel better. It seemed to. She liked it when he smiled.

“OTHER MONSTERS CAN DO IT, TOO! BUT SKELETONS DO IT MORE OFTEN, APPARENTLY.”

She looked at him again. She didn’t look as worried now, but she still looked … unsure. She tilted her head. “So have you always … uppercased?”

Papyrus paused. Now it was his turn to think. To think really hard, apparently, because the answer didn’t come to him right away. He frowned and screwed up his browbone, and finally, very slowly, the answer came. Sort of.

“I DON’T THINK SO.”

Was that an answer? He didn’t know.

Undyne frowned a little harder and kept looking at him. She was still hesitant, but less so. She tended to forget about being hesitant when she was really interested in something. It felt good, to be the thing she was so interested in.

“Is it … something you do automatically, or …?”

Papyrus tilted his head and thought again. It wasn’t quite so hard this time.

“I THINK I STARTED DOING IT ON PURPOSE,” he said, quietly, figuring out the words only as they came out of his mouth. He shifted. He was starting to understand why Undyne fidgeted when she was nervous. “I THINK … SANS DIDN’T ALWAYS LOWERCASE LIKE HE DOES NOW. BUT THEN HE STARTED AND … I STARTED UPPERCASING.”

Undyne didn’t say anything. She looked at him, waiting for him to go on. He fidgeted a little more.

“IF ONE OF US LOWERCASES AND THE OTHER ONE UPPERCASES, THEN WE’RE STILL BALANCED, RIGHT?” he asked, even though he knew she wouldn’t have an answer. “IF I’M UPPERCASING … PEOPLE WON’T NOTICE SO MUCH IF HE LOWERCASES.”

She pressed her lips together, like she wanted to say something but she didn’t know why. Papyrus looked down and shrugged.

“THEY WON’T THINK THAT ANYTHING’S WRONG WITH HIM.”

He stayed like that for a long, long time, and when he finally looked up, Undyne’s face was even harder to read. There was a crease in between her eyebrows, and it looked like she was biting the inside of her lip.

“Is there?”

“NO,” Papyrus said, fast, as fast as he could, his voice was too high pitched, but he had to say it he had to make sure she understood he couldn’t—“NO, THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH HIM.”

He opened his mouth to keep going, but Undyne held up her hands.

“Okay. Okay. Nothing’s wrong with your brother,” she said. It wasn’t a question. Papyrus closed his mouth and let out a long, shaky breath. Undyne smiled. It was tighter and uncomfortable, but a second later she punched his shoulder, and it felt as normal as it always did. “Hey. You wanna go cook something?”

And just like that, the twisting in Papyrus’s soul was gone, and he was beaming as wide as he ever did.

“OKAY!”

Undyne smiled, a real smile this time, a soft smile, and punched him again, gentler than before.

They spent the rest of the afternoon destroying her kitchen, and Papyrus went home with ruined clothes and the taste of burnt spaghetti lingering on his teeth. They hadn’t gotten the recipe right yet, even after three valiant attempts, but they would keep going.

They had only been friends for a year, after all. They had plenty of time to figure it out.

Her words still echoed in the back of his head as he reached Snowdin, but he pushed them away. It was a good friendversary. Even with that not-so-good… it had still been a good friendversary.

But when he got back to the house, he still went up to Sans’s room and walked in without even a knock. Sans looked up from the book in his hands—one of their history textbooks from school, by the looks of it. He looked tired. He always looked tired. Sometimes Papyrus thought that there had been a time when he wasn’t tired, when he had played with Papyrus like Undyne did, when they wrestled and ran around and had tickle fights and all the things he thought brothers did. But it was too far away to remember.

Just like it was too far to remember a Sans that didn’t lowercase.

Sans started to speak, but before he could get out a word, Papyrus crossed the room and pulled him up into the tightest hug he could manage. Sans only froze a second before hugging him back. They stood there for a long minute, just hugging, holding each other until their ribs threatened to crack.

In the back of his mind, Papyrus wondered how long it had been since they had hugged like this, but he realized, very quickly, that he didn’t want to know.

He had the best brother in the world, and the best friend in the world, too.

That was all that mattered.

As long as he had them, everything else would work out fine.


	2. Papyrus and Undyne (Part II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to all who have left comments, kudos, bookmarked, and read the story so far!!
> 
> Warning for emotional manipulation and emotional abuse. Just ... uh, yeah, prepare yourselves.

Papyrus was used to Dr. Japer going off in her own head.

She did that a lot. Sometimes when they said something—Papyrus wasn’t sure exactly what kind of somethings, but very specific somethings—and sometimes for no reason that he could figure out. She would stand in one place and just … stare at nothing, and she looked like she was actually very far away, even though she was here, she was solid, he had even poked her once to be sure and she had looked very annoyed so he hadn’t done it again.

This time … this time she was staring at something in her hand.

He couldn’t see what it was at first. It was very small. But it was shiny, and if he snuck up beside her, very carefully, he could make it out against her black fur.

It looked like a necklace. Or … part of a necklace. A small part of a necklace. A thick necklace with shiny metal beads and little charms in between them. He tilted his head and smiled. He knew she wouldn’t let him touch it, but it was still nice to look at.

“THAT’S PRETTY,” he said without thinking, and she jumped, turning to face him with sharp eyes. Papyrus shrunk a bit, but he had already spoken, so he might as well finish. He glanced down at the necklace. “I’VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE. IS IT YOURS?”

Dr. Japer stared at him for a second, silent, before she followed his gaze to the necklace piece. Her eyes softened for a moment, then looked very sad. Then they hardened completely, and she curled her paw around it.

“It was my niece’s.”

“OH,” Papyrus said. Because he had heard her talk about her niece once or twice. No one ever talked about what happened to her. But Papyrus knew that wherever she was, she wasn’t coming back. And Dr. Japer was still very, very sad about it. He looked at her paw, even though the necklace was almost entirely hidden now. “IT … IT’S BROKEN.”

Her paw tightened, and her lips pursed. “Yes. It broke in the explosion.”

Papyrus fidgeted. He had heard that word a few times. He had seen it in books he read, books about places that he had never seen. But … there was something in her voice when she said it, something that reminded him of …

He swallowed.

“DO YOU MEAN … THE ACCIDENT? THE ONE THAT HAPPENED WHEN …”

He trailed off, and Dr. Japer looked at him. Just looked at him, with eyes so hard that it made him want to curl up in the corner and duck his head and never look up again.

“The one your father caused,” she said, very quietly, and he couldn’t decide whether he heard more anger or pain.

Papyrus bit back the whine in the back of his throat. Somehow, when she said it, it felt more like she was talking about him.

He swallowed again and did his very best not to look away.

“DO YOU … HAVE THE OTHER PARTS?” he asked, carefully, with a little bit of hope in his voice. “MAYBE WE COULD FIX IT. I COULD GET SOME GLUE AND—”

“No, Papyrus, I don’t have the other parts,” she snapped, and he flinched back. She paused, and for a second, he thought he saw regret in her eyes. Pain, but a different kind of pain. Pain like … like she had hurt him, pain like she hadn’t _wanted_ to hurt him. Then she closed her eyes and turned away, clutching her paw close to her body as she walked toward the kitchen. “Go play somewhere else. I’m busy.”

Papyrus stood there, frozen, as she disappeared around the corner. He listened to the clattering of pots and pans, much louder than they normally were when she prepared dinner, as if she were trying to take her anger out on the objects instead of him.

Finally, he lowered his head, staring at the floor and wrapping his arms around himself in a loose hug.

For a while, he just stood there, her words echoing in his head over and over again, the sharp look in her eyes, the bite of her voice. But slowly, his mind shifted to the necklace. The necklace that had been broken, the necklace that she must have wanted whole again. The necklace whose broken pieces might still be where they had been left, years ago. Waiting to be found.

Maybe Dr. Japer couldn’t find them, but … Papyrus had always been good at finding things.

The accident … the accident had happened in Hotland. He knew where it was. He had never been very close to it, but he had seen it from a distance. He could get there in an hour or two, and … and if he left on Saturday morning … Dr. Japer was planning to go into the lab this Saturday, she had said so, and Sans had work. Undyne was busy, she had already told him she wouldn’t be able to meet up, so he had the whole day to himself.

An hour or two to get there, and hour or two back.

Which left plenty of time to look.

Papyrus looked at the entrance to the kitchen, even though he couldn’t see Dr. Japer from where he stood. He couldn’t hear her either, not cooking or looking around for a snack. He wondered if she was staring at the necklace again. He wondered if she looked as sad as she had before.

He wondered if she would look happy, if she could hold the whole thing.

He stood up a little taller, took a deep breath, and nodded to himself.

Yes. Saturday.

And maybe, if he tried very hard, and if he was really, really lucky … maybe he could actually make her smile.

*

The wreckage was a lot scarier in person.

He had heard kids talking about it for as long as he could remember—or almost, anyway. Sometimes they dared each other to get close to it, or even go inside it, though he hadn’t heard of anyone who actually did so. He had heard grown-ups talking about how dangerous it was, how they should never go near it, no matter what, because they could get hurt very badly or might not come back out at all.

He could hear those grown-ups’ voices in his head as he walked closer, echoing warnings he had heard over and over, even if they were never directed at him.

Dr. Japer had never warned him about the wreckage.

She had never talked about it at all.

He would be okay. He was a skeleton, and he had very high HP. He didn’t get hurt as easily as other kids did. All he had to do was go inside, find the broken piece of the necklace, and get back out.

Besides, wasn’t Undyne always telling him he needed to do more “fun and dangerous” things? This was dangerous. And it might be fun. Maybe if he figured out a way to get in and out, they could come here together. Then he could teach her how to do something instead of the other way around, and she would be proud of him.

Yes. He would be fine.

It wasn’t so hard at first, even though it was scary. There wasn’t as much to climb over around the edges, just a few sharp pieces of metal he could avoid without much trouble. He turned it into a game, moving through the wreckage as fast as he could, imagining Undyne’s voice cheering him on, telling him to go faster, try harder, she knew he could do this but he had to keep trying. It was easy to forget where he was, easy to forget how dangerous everyone said this place was supposed to be.

Maybe if the other kids heard that he had done this, all by himself, they would admire him.

But after a while … it wasn’t so easy to forget where he was. It wasn’t so easy to make his way around the wreckage without paying very close attention. Sometimes he would take a step and the floor under him would wobble and he would jump back just in time to watch the floor fall out where he had been. Another time he wanted to check a new area but the only way to get there was over a long piece of metal that had fallen like a bridge, and every few steps he took the bridge would wobble and he would come so close to falling but barely manage to keep his balance.

He tried to tell himself that Undyne would be proud of him for doing this even though he was scared, but a part of him told him that Undyne would be more worried than proud.

He looked around for what felt like an hour. It was hard to see anything, with how much of a mess it was, and there was a lot of ash and broken metal and he knew what the necklace was supposed to look like but it was so small and there were so many holes in the floor he didn’t even know if it was still there. But he had come all the way here, he had been looking this long, and he didn’t think he could bear the idea of going back home without something to show for it.

So he kept looking. He searched and searched, he picked up pieces of metal and dug through ash and he climbed around places that trembled with every step he took and once or twice he felt like crying with frustration but he kept going.

When he finally saw the glimmer in the corner of his eye, he was almost moving fast enough to miss it.

He turned his head and focused his eyes, and after a second, his browbone rose.

There.

It was rusted around the edges, but it still shined faintly silver, just bright enough for him to make it out among the pile of ash a few yards away. His mouth curled into a smile as he ran forward, faster, he was almost there, just a little further.

Something caught his foot and sent him flying forward, crashing face-first into the ash. He pushed himself up, coughing, and winced at the sudden pain in his left leg. He didn’t look at it. Pain was always worse when you could see why it was painful.

He got to his feet and walked the rest of the way to the glinting silver. He knelt down next to it, slipped his fingers underneath it, and tilted it back and forth in the light.

Yes. That was definitely it. He could even see an engraving on the edge, the part that had been cut off where the necklace broke.

He smiled down at it, slipped it into the pocket of his sweater, then turned around.

And stared up at the path leading out of the wreckage.

A shudder ran through his body, but he held himself tall, squared his shoulders, ignored the stinging in his leg, and started back the way he had come.

* 

Dr. Japer stared at the necklace piece for a full minute after he took it out of his pocket, her mouth hanging open, her eyes as wide as he had ever seen them.

He couldn’t figure out whether it was good staring or bad staring. He didn’t know why it would be bad staring. But he still found himself fidgeting, pushing aside the ache in his arm from holding it up so long and trying his best to keep smiling.

When she finally moved, it was slow and careful and … reverent? Something like that. She took it out of his hands and into her own, holding it carefully, like she might hold a little bird made out of tissue paper, except Papyrus had once made her a bird out of tissue paper and she hadn’t treated it this carefully. She looked at it like it was the only thing in the world, running her fingers over it, her eyes glistening with tears he knew she wouldn’t let fall.

Then she looked at him, and his breath caught in his throat.

“… You found this?”

He stood up a little taller, trying to hide how hard his hands were shaking. “IN THE WRECKAGE.”

“You went to the wreckage?” she asked, and he thought he heard a little concern underneath the pure confusion.

“UH-HUH!” he said, standing up as tall as he could. If he stood up tall enough, then maybe she wouldn’t see the fear still lingering in his sockets. “THERE ARE A LOT OF PLACES THAT ARE HARD TO GET THROUGH, BUT I’M VERY GOOD AT SQUEEZING INTO SMALL PLACES! AND CLIMBING! I’M A GOOD CLIMBER, TOO!”

Dr. Japer looked at him. She looked at the necklace, pressing her lips into a tight line. Then she looked back to him.

“… Yes. Yes, you are.”

Papyrus blinked. “I AM?”

“Yes,” she repeated. “You …”

She trailed off, clasping the necklace a little tighter against her fingers. Her eyes went soft.

“Thank you, Papyrus.”

It was the first time she had ever thanked him, at least that he remembered. And before he could even think of what to say in response, he saw her lips curl up at the corners, tilting into a small, shaky smile.

It was a very pretty smile, and he suddenly felt sad that it had taken him so long to see it.

And he had put it there. _He_ had done that. She had been sad and … he had made her happy. It had been scary, but it didn’t matter, because she was _smiling_ at him.

He stood up a little straighter, unable to stop himself from smiling back. She smiled a little wider, still sad, still shaky, and reached out to pat his shoulder before she turned around and walked across the living room, into her bedroom, staring down at the necklace cradled carefully in her hands.

Papyrus stood there for a long time, just soaking in the memory of her gentle touch. It felt … familiar, like he had felt it before but it was so long ago he couldn’t remember it. It was … nice. It was warm and gentle and he wanted more than anything to feel it again.

He had made her happy.

He had done something to help her, and it made her happy.

His own mouth curled up, wider and wider until the smile threatened to split his skull in two. Then he smiled wider still.

Finally, he turned back around and started up the stairs, toward his room. He made it to the third step before he stumbled and fell, barely catching himself before his face smacked into the floor. He paused for a moment, frozen, gritting his teeth against the whimper building in his throat.

He had forgotten how bad his leg hurt. And walking all the way home had only made it worse.

Maybe … maybe he should ask Dr. Japer to heal him. This hurt worse than anything he had felt in a long time, and …

But …

If he told her, that would mean admitting that he had gotten hurt in the wreckage. Gotten hurt getting something for her.

And … she was so happy now. If she heard that he had gotten hurt … maybe she wouldn’t be happy anymore. And he wanted her to stay happy for as long as she could. Maybe it wouldn’t last forever, maybe it would just be a while, but … even that was worth it.

He grit his teeth a little harder and pushed himself to his feet, gripping the railing to keep his balance.

He would be fine. He had always been a fast healer, and he had plenty of HP. He would just … be careful the next few days. He would be alright. He just needed a little time.

A little time to heal was more than worth it to see Dr. Japer happy.

Papyrus glanced over his shoulder, toward the faint sound of Dr. Japer moving around her bedroom.

Then he nodded to himself, gripped the railing as tight as he could, and made his way up the stairs.

*

It took more than a week before he could walk normally again.

He tried. He tried really, really hard. But … it wasn’t easy, when every time his foot hit the ground it felt like needles were digging into his bones.

He wrapped it up after the first day, like he had heard of people doing with broken bones—it didn’t look _broken,_ but … if he looked really, really closely, he swore there was a line that hadn’t been there before, and besides, it felt better the less he moved it.

He did his best to hide it, and for the most part, it worked. Sans was gone so much of the time that it wasn’t hard to avoid walking around him, and Dr. Japer … Dr. Japer wasn’t paying that much attention.

She had been nicer to him lately. Smiled a little more. Asked what he wanted for dinner, bought him a few more toys.

It felt as familiar as the smile, as if this sort of thing had once been normal. He didn’t know when, and he didn’t know if it was real. But he liked it. He liked it even more than he had imagined he would.

But she didn’t notice his leg, and even though he didn’t want her to know, it still hurt, just a little.

Undyne noticed.

Papyrus should have known from the beginning he wouldn’t be able to hide it from her. They spent too much time together, and even though she sometimes got distracted, even though sometimes she was too wrapped up in whatever she was doing to notice little things … she also noticed a lot.

Still, he hadn’t expected she would notice it so quickly.

“What the hell happened to your leg?!”

And of course, he didn’t have any idea what he was going to tell her.

But after a pause, where she gawked at him and he stood there, looking at her, completely frozen, he finally swallowed the lump in his throat and told her that he had slipped on a patch of snow and fallen on a rock.

Undyne stared at him for a long, long time, and at first, he wasn’t sure if she believed him. But finally, she huffed, shaking her head and saying that if he wasn’t going to be careful then maybe she would just have to follow him around to make sure he didn’t get hurt.

It didn’t sound mean to him, and he didn’t take it that way. He might have smiled from how much she cared about him if he hadn’t already been smiling in relief.

She was careful around him while he was healing. It wasn’t obvious—she still punched him in the shoulder and gave him noogies and even play-wrestled a little. But she always avoided his injured leg, never bumping it, even once. After the first week, he kept telling her he felt better, his leg didn’t hurt at all anymore, but she was still careful.

It felt … good, to have someone pay that much attention to him.

After a while, though, she went back to how she was before, and even when his bones ached from her punches, it was still a relief. She seemed to forget about his leg, and he was happy to let her. They continued with their normal routine, meeting up on weekends and after school. Weeks passed, just like they had before. It was hard to remember a time when he wondered whether she would show up at all. It was hard to remember what he had done with his time before he spent it with her.

He appreciated being able to skip and run through Waterfall on the way to meet her, slowing down and speeding up at random intervals, stretching his healed leg. There was a scar, a light, thin scar, but he had had worse. Probably. It would get better soon. Until then … until then, he would just wear pants instead of shorts.

That was fine.

And he could run. That was what was important.

He stepped into the room, mouth already open to ask Undyne how her day had been and what she wanted to do.

But Undyne wasn’t there.

Papyrus paused, frozen, before letting his mouth fall shut. He looked around the room, but there was no place to hide, no place she could have been ready to jump out of to scare him—he wasn’t sure if she would do that, but it sounded like something that would make her laugh. He thought maybe she was just late, but … it was Saturday. Sometimes she was late during the week because of school, or an extra training session with the king, but not on the weekends. Besides, she had told him yesterday that she would be here at noon. He didn’t have a watch, but he couldn’t have gotten here _that_ fast.

He waited there for a minute, but still, she didn’t show up. He knew she might be running late, but … she was never late. She was early, if anything. And even if she wasn’t feeling well, she would still call and let him know she couldn’t come.

He fidgeted, then opened his mouth.

“UNDYNE?” he called, a little quietly at first, though his voice echoed around the walls for a good ten seconds before it went quiet. He listened, then called again, louder than before. “UNDYNE?”

“Over here!”

Papyrus’s head snapped to the left, toward a hallway he had seen every time they had come here, but never followed. Undyne had never gone in there when he was there, and so he never had either. But now he ran in without any hesitation, following the lingering echoes of her voice until he turned into a small room, almost as empty as the one they had come from.

With Undyne standing by the wall, leaning over a rectangular piece of furniture Papyrus couldn’t name.

“WOW!” Papyrus shouted, taking a moment to appreciate the impressive echo in the room. He spun around a few times, looking at the ceiling and the walls, mostly blank, but decorated with a few shiny stones. “I’VE NEVER SEEN THIS PLACE BEFORE!”

“You don’t come to Waterfall much without me, do you?” Undyne asked, glancing up from the piece of furniture.

“I GUESS NOT,” Papyrus said replied. He looked at the piece of furniture she was apparently cleaning off and tilted his head. “WHAT’S THAT?”

Undyne blinked at him. She looked at the piece of furniture. Then she looked back to him, frowning.

“You never seen a piano before?”

Papyrus stepped closer. “NO. WHAT DOES IT DO?”

Undyne gave him another weird look, though not as weird as the ones she had given him when they first met. It had been a while since they met, he realized. A long while.

“It plays music,” she answered at last.

Papyrus’s sockets widened.

“ALL BY ITSELF?”

Undyne groaned, but there was a smile twitching at the corners of her lips. “ _No,_ only when I play it.”

“HOW DO YOU PLAY IT?” Papyrus asked, stepping closer still.

Undyne rolled her eyes, but the joking sort of eye-roll she did when she wasn’t frustrated but wanted to make it clear that she would have been with someone else. Then she sat down on the bench, put her hands on the black and white rectangles, and began to press her fingers down.

And music came out.

It didn’t sound quite like any music he’d heard before, but he loved it, from the first few seconds. Her fingers moved faster than he had known her fingers _could_ move, as if she didn’t have to think about it, as if she had memorized every little motion to make, every rectangle to press. His bones tingled as the music rose and fell, and after what must have been only a minute but which felt like much, much longer, she lifted her hands and turned back to him.

Papyrus applauded.

“WOWIE!” he cried after a good ten seconds of clapping. “YOU’RE REALLY GOOD!”

Papyrus had never seen Undyne blush. It was a funny color, the red mixing with the blue of her cheeks. She looked away and shrugged.

“Well, I’m … I’m learning. I guess I’m okay.”

“NO, YOU’RE REALLY REALLY GOOD!” he insisted.

Undyne looked back at him, a smile turning up the corners of her lips. “Thanks.”

Papyrus beamed. “CAN YOU PLAY SOMETHING ELSE?”

Undyne chuckled, but laid her fingers on the rectangles again.

“Any requests?”

Papyrus frowned. “UH … I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU CAN PLAY.”

Undyne chewed her bottom lip and looked up at the ceiling.

“Okay, I’ll just play … oh! This one’s a human classic, apparently.”

Without waiting for him to respond, she turned back around, took a moment to set her hands right, and began to play again.

Papyrus sat down on the floor of the room, rested his hands in his lap, and listened to the music.

It was … beautiful.

He didn’t really know how to describe it other than that. It was … alive, even though he knew music couldn’t _really_ be alive. It was … excited and happy and intense and sometimes it got faster or slower and it was like he could feel the emotions beneath it but it always went back to that same bright energy. It sounded like Undyne, even though it didn’t have a voice like she did and even though he had never heard Undyne sing.

He could see the passion in her face just as he could hear it in the sounds. Her brow furrowed and smoothed out, her hands sped up and slowed down, her mouth pressed into a tight line before smoothing out into a smile.

His bones tingled, his eyes brightened, and his soul felt warm. He could have listened to her play forever. He could have escaped in that sound, drowned in it, soaked it in until nothing else mattered. Until they had no more problems, no more pains. Until everything he had ever worried about had drifted far, far away.

And as soon as her fingers lifted from the piano, the last notes of the song drifting off into silence, he was already asking to hear it again.

*

“Papyrus?”

It was weird, to hear his name spoken so gently from someone other than Sans.

Well, someone other than Sans and Undyne. But Undyne didn’t really speak “gently,” even if he knew she was being nice.

But he couldn’t remember the last time he had heard his name in that voice from Dr. Japer. Sometimes he thought he could remember it, from a very, very long time ago, but it was too fuzzy for him to be sure.

Somehow he knew that it had still sounded a little different then, even though he had no idea why.

He turned around on the couch to face her, putting down the puzzle book he had borrowed from the library.

“YES, DR. JAPER?”

Dr. Japer stood at the other end of the couch, just beside the arm, and as he turned, she glanced away, as if she was too nervous to meet his eyes.

“I have a favor to ask.”

Papyrus perked up, and barely managed to keep himself from beaming.

“YES? WHAT IS IT?”

Dr. Japer hesitated. She kept her gaze on the floor for a few more seconds, then finally looked back to him.

“When you went to get the … piece of my niece’s necklace … you found a way to get into the wreckage and back out again, right?”

Papyrus did his very best not to think about the details of it. “YES.”

“It was fairly deep into the wreckage, but you found a way in.”

“… YES.”

Papyrus wasn’t standing up so tall anymore. Something felt … off. Dr. Japer still wouldn’t look at him for more than a second at a time, and it took her more than half a minute before she opened her mouth once more.

“Do you think you could do it again?”

It felt a little like Papyrus imagined how other monsters might feel a bucket of ice water dumped over their head.

He shivered, even though he wasn’t cold, even though he knew he couldn’t really get cold. He barely managed to keep the fear from showing on his face when Dr. Japer glanced at him again, before looking away.

“There are … a lot of things that I had in my old office. Family mementos. Photos. Things I will … never be able to replace,” she went on, carefully, as if she wasn’t sure how to say it right. “I tried to get into the wreckage. After the … accident. But I couldn’t.”

She looked at him, and this time, her gaze held.

“But you can.”

Papyrus bit back another shiver, clenching his teeth and holding his arms close to his body. He fidgeted as her eyes remained on him, and he barely managed to stop himself from looking away.

“I … I MEAN … IT WAS … IT WAS KIND OF SCARY IN THERE …”

Dr. Japer bit her lip. For a second, he thought that she would let it go. She would tell him it was okay, the wreckage was dangerous, just like all the other grown-ups said that the wreckage was dangerous. Then she sighed.

“Papyrus,” she started, gently. “I would go back and get those things myself if I could. But I can’t.”

Her eyes were so soft, so pleading, so … pained.

“I didn’t think there was any chance of getting those back before. But now I do. Thanks to you,” she went on, her lips quirking up into a hesitant smile. “It would make me very happy if you could get some of my things back.”

Papyrus curled up a little tighter, even as he did his best to still hold himself tall.

She had never asked him for a favor before this. She didn’t ask him for … anything really. Not help cleaning, or with cooking, or the dishes. She did everything, even though he wanted to help, even though he would have gladly helped with anything she asked. Now she was asking him. Now she was asking him for something really, really important. Something she couldn’t do on her own.

Something that would make her happy, just like the necklace had.

Papyrus swallowed hard and did his best to lift his head high.

“WELL … I CAN TRY.”

Dr. Japer’s shoulders sagged in relief, and her lips curled up in the corners in a smile that made the ache in his chest feel a little bit looser.

“Thank you, Papyrus,” she said, her voice so gentle, so kind, and he wondered where that voice had been all these years, and why he had never done anything to earn it before. “How about I make something special for dinner? Macaroni and cheese?”

Papyrus perked up, and he only had to fake it a little bit this time. “THAT WOULD BE GREAT!”

Dr. Japer smiled wider and nodded.

“Good.”

She turned around and started toward the kitchen, and Papyrus found his mouth opening, ready to ask whether he could help her make it. But then he paused, frozen, and closed his mouth, watching her disappear around the corner. He didn’t want to try his luck.

But maybe … maybe if he brought something nice back next time, he would be able to ask. Maybe if he brought back something she really, really liked, then they could cook together. She could teach him how to make sauce that didn’t explode—or maybe it would explode and get all over them and they would laugh and throw sauce at each other and then have fun cleaning it all up. Even if it didn’t explode, that was fine. Even if it was simple and quiet and they didn’t even talk … that would be fine.

Yes. He would find something nice next time. He would make her happy.

No matter what it took.

* 

Papyrus went back to the wreckage four times over the next six months.

He tried to put it off as long as he could before each visit. The wreckage was … scary. And it didn’t stop being scary. As soon as he got used to one part, as soon as he figured out how to work his way around it, he had to look somewhere else, and figure that out, too. Sometimes he walked on something unsteady. Sometimes the floor under him creaked so loud he thought it was going to break. One time he put his foot down and the floor actually _did_ break, and he had to throw himself back to keep from falling into the lava below.

He didn’t like it. It scared him, and he didn’t want to be there any more than he had to.

But at the same time, he wished he could go every day. Because every time he came back with something in his hands, he got to see Dr. Japer’s face light up, and she looked at him with warm, soft eyes he swore he had seen a long time ago even though he didn’t remember it and it felt good, it felt _wonderful,_ it felt like …

It felt like he was wanted.

He tried to ask her if she wanted to cook together after the first time, but she was so … focused on the little doll he had found, and she looked so happy and so sad all at once, and he couldn’t bring himself to break that trance and before he knew it it was the next day and he didn’t think he would dare ask then.

So he waited until the next time, when he brought back a whole box of little trinkets he had dug out of the ruins.

And Dr. Japer thanked him profusely, even gave him a hug, she hadn’t hugged him in years, he couldn’t even remember the last time she had hugged him, and he had opened his mouth to ask her if they could cook or just play a game or sit on the couch and watch TV, _anything,_ but before he could get out a word, she had already walked off to her room, saying that she needed to look through the things he had given her, and that she would order takeout for them to eat.

The third time, he blurted it out so fast it shocked even him, and she gave him a long, confused look before giving a small nod, a casual nod, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. He beamed, and immediately rushed into the kitchen, getting out everything they would need for an elaborate dinner.

Only for her to come in and say that she would just be making frozen dinners.

The fourth time, he didn’t even try. He handed her the files he had found—nothing about her family that he could see, but they had her name on them, so he thought they must be important—and went up to his bedroom, and she was too distracted looking through them to even say thank you.

He didn’t come out of his room for the rest of the day.

For a week after that, he didn’t say a word to her. She didn’t start a conversation. She didn’t even seem to notice that he wasn’t talking to her. He wasn’t mad. He was … he …

He didn’t know.

But talking to her made him think about it, and he didn’t want to think about it.

Instead, as soon as he got home from school every day, he dropped off his backpack and went to meet Undyne in Waterfall.

It was easier not to think about sad things when he was around her. She was louder than the thoughts in his head, louder than his worries that he hadn’t done enough, that he would never do enough, that no matter what he did, Dr. Japer would never spend time with him, never …

… want him.

Undyne made him feel like he was worth being around. Undyne made him feel like there was nothing in the world he could do that would make someone _not_ want to be around him.

It was a good feeling.

It made him wonder, sometimes, how he had gone the first nine years of his life without feeling it.

By Thursday, he had stopped thinking about Dr. Japer entirely. When he got to Waterfall, all he was thinking about was what he wanted to ask Undyne to play on the piano. He had gone to the library and picked up a book of sheet music, and she had been practicing a bunch of new songs. Every day she would have a new one ready, or two, or three, and every day he would have more requests for the day after that.

And every time she finished playing, he immediately wanted her to start playing again.

As soon as the last notes of her third song faded, Papyrus’s hands slammed together as he clapped as loud as he could, his smile wide and beaming and his eyes as bright as they had ever felt.

“ANOTHER! ANOTHER!”

Undyne chuckled and shook her head, but she looked more fond than annoyed, so he kept clapping as she stood up from the piano bench and stretched her arms over her head.

“You ever thought about learning to play yourself?” she asked as she lowered her hands again.

Papyrus finally stopped clapping and frowned. “PLAY? THE PIANO?”

“Or another instrument,” she said with a shrug. “The piano’s not the only one.”

Papyrus thought for a moment. He had _imagined_ what it might be like to create music like that on his own, but … he had never thought he could. He had never thought about trying. But … if he could do what Undyne did … if he could make something that sounded so nice, if he could make something that sounded so nice but in a different way … maybe they could play together. Maybe they could be like a band. A small band, but still a band.

He tilted his head.

“WHICH ONE DO YOU THINK I SHOULD PLAY?”

Undyne frowned.

“Uh … I dunno. I only know how to play piano.”

She paused, staring down at the piano for a long moment before she tilted her head.

“Well … you could try the violin,” she said with a shrug.

“WHAT’S A VIOLIN?” Papyrus asked.

Undyne turned to him. “I think Gerson’s got an old one he keeps lying around.”

“MR. GERSON?”

“Yeah, he’s got tons of old junk he never use,” she said with a fond gleam in her eyes. “He lets me borrow it. He’s probably got a violin somewhere.”

Papyrus perked up. “CAN YOU TEACH ME HOW TO PLAY IT?”

Undyne snorted. “Well, _I_ don’t know how to play it, so not really.”

Papyrus’s posture sagged a bit.

“THEN … HOW DO I LEARN?”

“Same as me,” Undyne said, as if it should have been obvious. “You teach yourself. No one taught me how to play piano. I just decided I wanted to and did it. I sucked at first, then I kept practicing and trying things out and I got better. Piano’s a little easier, I think, but you’ll figure it out.”

Papyrus might have felt nervous, maybe unsure, but it was hard to feel either of those things when Undyne was looking at him like it was the easiest thing in the world. He stood up a little straighter.

“DO YOU THINK I’LL BE GOOD?”

Undyne’s eyes softened as she looked him over, head to toe. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips.

“Yeah, Papyrus. I think you’ll be great.”

* 

Papyrus had expected learning the violin to be hard, but he hadn’t thought it would be quite _this_ hard.

Undyne had made playing the piano look so easy. But she had told him the piano was easier, and she had been playing since she was six, and she was already fifteen. But at least the piano still made nice sounds if you played it badly. All you had to do was press down on a key and you made a nice sound. The first time Papyrus picked up the bow and moved it over the strings of the violin, it sounded a bit like an old piece of metal scraping against another piece of metal, and even though she tried to hide it, he could see Undyne gritting her teeth.

It took hours for him to get the sound right, and that was just the first note. Then he had to learn another, and another, and by the time they had finished going through all the main notes, Undyne playing each on the piano and Papyrus doing his best to mimic it, it was long past dinner.

Sans had worked late that night, so he wasn’t home to be worried that Papyrus was late, and Dr. Japer didn’t seem to have noticed his absence at all.

But he didn’t care. He spent the rest of the evening looking through the “basics of music” book Undyne had shoved in his hands before he left, and as soon as he was out of school the next day, he was back in Waterfall, practicing yet again.

After an hour, he could tell she was getting frustrated, and tired, and when she suggested they go play in the pond for a while, he didn’t protest. But as soon as she left, he picked up his violin and started practicing again. And again the next day, after she went home. And over the weekend, in Waterfall, and Snowdin, wherever he could go that people wouldn’t complain about the noise.

He went through the scales, just like she taught him. He mastered all of the notes. Then he found some sheet music, one of the more complicated songs she had given him for practice, and started working on it. It was slow at first. Very slow. He kept missing notes or forgetting what he was supposed to do next and it was really hard to prop up the paper without getting it wet. But finally, he managed it. He got all the way through without any mistakes. Then he went again. And again, and again after that.

He barely noticed when two weeks had passed, and Undyne asked him how his practice was going.

Then, when he said it was going well, she asked if she could hear him play.

A little part of him wanted to say no. But he had never known how to say no to Undyne, and in two years, that hadn’t changed.

So he just nodded and picked up his violin.

She crossed her arms, held her head up high, and grinned at him, watching him with expectation. He was a little afraid that he would disappoint her. After all, she was really, really good on the piano, and she had still cringed a little when he hit a few wrong notes last time. But … he had practiced a lot. He didn’t think he had hit a wrong note in days. He had played as often as he could, whenever Sans and Dr. Japer were both at their jobs, whenever he could sneak away by himself to the quiet, empty parts of Snowdin and practice until he had to go back home. He had tried his best.

And … Undyne had told him that was all she wanted from him.

She said she believed in him. She said she knew he could do it, if he really tried. And he _had_ really tried.

So before he could tell himself all the other reasons he had to be nervous, he took a long, deep breath, propped up his violin, lifted his bow, and began to play.

He could still see the music in his head if he thought about it, but he didn’t need to. He closed his eyes and let his hands move like they had every time he had played this song before. He swayed a little back and forth with the music, and as the song went on, it was easier and easier to pretend he was alone again. He was just outside of Snowdin, practicing, like Undyne had told him. At first, all he thought about was how he wanted to make her proud, but after a while … after a while, all he could think about was the song. How it made his soul rise and fall with the notes, how it made his browbone furrow and a smile curl up his mouth. How he felt warm and cold and happy and sad and it was _wonderful_ and he never, ever wanted it to end.

But it had always ended before, and it ended again. Papyrus held the last note as long as he could, then lifted the bow and lowered the violin, opening his eyes to focus on Undyne’s face.

Only to find her staring.

Not normal staring. He was used to that. She stared in determination, in concentration, in interest. But now her eyes were wider than he had known they could even get, looking at him as if he were the most impossible thing she had ever seen. He stiffened. She blinked, once, very slowly. Papyrus fidgeted, and finally, Undyne let out a long, shaky breath.

“… holy _crap._ ”

“WHAT?” Papyrus almost squeaked, holding the violin close to his torso. She kept staring, and he shifted his weight from foot to foot. “WAS IT BAD?”

Undyne’s mouth hung open so low he swore he could see down her throat. She shook her head, very slowly.

“Papyrus, that was … when’d you get that good?!”

Papyrus blinked. He ran the words over a couple of times in his head to make sure he had heard them right, but they stayed the same.          

“I … I PRACTICED,” he said, not sure if that was the right answer, but it was the only one he had. “EVERY DAY. LIKE YOU TOLD ME TO.”

Undyne’s mouth was still open, and she shook her head again. “It’s been _two weeks_.”

Papyrus fidgeted, clutching the violin a little tighter.

“IS … IS THAT A LONG TIME?”

“Not to learn to play like _that_!” Undyne said, motioning toward the violin in his hands. Papyrus blinked, and finally he started to realize that she wasn’t insulting him. She was … she had liked it. Hadn’t she? She looked … her eyes were bright, bright like his after he listened to her play, and there was a smile tugging at her lips even as she kept gawking. “Fu—rick, are you sure you never played before?! You weren’t pulling my leg, were you?”

Papyrus frowned. “WHY WOULD I PULL YOUR LEG? IF I WANTED TO PULL YOU SOMEWHERE, I WOULD PULL YOU BY YOUR HAND.”

Undyne laughed, a loud, wonderful sound, and he felt himself relax, just a little.

“You’re really good, Papyrus,” she said, and now she was beaming, looking at him as if he were the most incredible thing she had ever seen. “ _Really_ good.”

Papyrus stood up a little straighter. His soul felt light and warm.

“I AM?”

“Hell yeah.” Her lips spread further, her teeth gleaming from her grin. She glanced down at the violin. “Can you play anything else?”

Papyrus shook his head, a little confused. “I ONLY PRACTICED THAT ONE SONG.”

He wondered if maybe he was meant to, but she just waved him off as if it wasn’t a surprise.

“That’s fine. Come on, let’s do it again. I’ll dig out some sheet music I found later on and you can start working on that.”

It took Papyrus a few tries to get the melody right. He kept trying to go back to the song he knew on reflex, but Undyne nudged him as gently as she could, and within half an hour she had joined in with the same song on piano, and they were running through the song over and over again. Each time, it felt more natural. Each time, it got easier for his fingers to find the strings and move the bow in exactly the right away.

Each time, Undyne smiled a little wider, until she was beaming, prouder than she had ever looked back, and Papyrus smiled back so wide and so long that his jaw felt like it would split in two.

And as their joint music filled the room once more, melding together as if that was the way it had always been, his problems had never felt further away.


	3. Papyrus and Undyne (Part III)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to be clear, Dr. Japer is being both emotionally abusive and openly manipulative in this fic. She has reasons for having turned out like this, but that doesn't excuse it.
> 
> Also, fair warning for ... semi-graphic injury in this chapter. Heads up.

“I have a favor to ask.”

Papyrus had lost track of how many times he had heard those words over the years. He didn’t hear them as often nowadays. It had been eight months since the last time, and that time, it had been something small.

He knew from the second he turned around that this wasn’t something small.

He didn’t know _how_ he knew. Dr. Japer’s face was always the same when she asked, distant, as if her mind was too focused on what she wanted him to do to remember it was him she was talking to. But he had never guessed wrong. He was good at guessing things like that.

He wondered, once, whether anyone would have been impressed by that talent, if he brought it up.

It didn’t matter, because he wasn’t going to. But he wondered.

Dr. Japer met his eyes for a moment, then looked away, and he swore he saw a bit of guilt flash across her eyes, like it always did when she was asking for something big. But it wasn’t there long. It never was.

Papyrus sat up a little straighter on the couch, setting his puzzle book aside.

“YES?”

She glanced at him, then away again. The guilt was completely gone now, replaced by the same mixture of nostalgia and pain that always seemed to be there.

“There are some … photos that I kept in my office in the ... wreckage,” she began, carefully, as if she had spent a long time thinking about it before she finally decided to say it out loud. “I didn’t think they survived, but … you’ve found a lot of other things that I didn’t think would have made it. I … think there may be a chance that they’re still there.”

Her eyes landed on him one more time. Papyrus bit back the sigh already building in his throat and pushed the book a little further away.

“WHERE?”

Her lips twitched up at the corners. It wasn’t a happy smile, but it wasn’t a sad one either. He had never found a good name for it, even though he had seen it too many times to count. She turned around and started toward the kitchen.

“I’ll point it out on the map. It’s close to the west side.”

Papyrus barely needed the map now. He could probably walk around the wreckage blindfolded and not even trip over anything. But he looked at the spot she pointed at and made sure he knew where to go. He had been in that area before, once or twice. It was one of the worst parts that had actually survived. Furniture had been knocked over, big metal beams had fallen down and sometimes poked right through the floor, and he could barely tell what anything used to be. But it had still survived. Which meant he could get inside.

Dr. Japer thanked him three times before he left, and he smiled at her, his eyes tired, but said nothing as he stepped out the front door. It was Saturday, and Sans had been out at work for a while. Normally he would be in Waterfall with Undyne, but she had gotten busier lately, and he was spending more and more of his free time alone.

He knew that was a part of growing up. He was almost finished with high school, and Undyne, being four years older than him, had finished a while ago. She had already been training with the Royal Guard for years before, and now that she didn’t have to go to school anymore, she started working for them full-time.

She was happy, and he was happy for her. She had been going up in the ranks quickly, and he knew she was having the time of her life. She had always hated school, and now she got to spend all her time training and fighting and hanging out with people who valued being strong as much as she did—and she still got to play piano in her free time, so much so that she had even talked about doing it as a part-time job.

He was happy for her, and he knew that should be enough not to miss her.

But it wasn’t.

Still, he tried to appreciate the time they still spent together. And she _did_ make time for him. As much as she could. They still got together at least once a week to talk, do puzzles, cook. Run around in the ponds in Waterfall. Play duets on the piano and violin.

Undyne had mentioned doing duets together if she did get a job as a musician. Maybe once he was out of school … maybe they could do that together.

That sounded fun.

He smiled to himself, stood up a little taller, and continued on his way.

It was hard to stay smiling when the wreckage came into view. He had seen it so many times now that he thought he would get used to it. But every time, he still heard the bubbling of the lava, the creaking of the metal, felt the sting of the many tiny fractures he had gained while making his way through them. But he was better now, much more skilled at getting around without getting hurt. He would be fine.

Pushing back the apprehension in his soul, he climbed into the wreckage and started on his way.

This time, at least, he knew exactly where to look, so he didn’t have to bother searching as he made his way to the spot she had pointed out on the map. He tried to make a game of it, timing how long it took for him to cross bridges and climb over the piles of debris. He made up little songs to sing out loud as he went, and tried to translate them into sheet music in his head so he could play them on the violin later.

He told himself that Undyne would be proud of him, doing something as brave as this.

He still didn’t want her to know he was doing it, though. He knew she would want him to stop.

He could hear her voice in the back of his head, alternating between cheering him on and shouting that this was too dangerous, he was going to hurt himself, why was he doing this, he was _smarter_ than this, she didn’t want him to get hurt. She would never want him to get hurt, no matter how brave he was being.

But Papyrus had been hearing that voice in his head for years, and if he sung loud enough, he could cover it up.

It only took him half an hour to get to the point Dr. Japer had pointed to on the map.

It looked like it had been an office once. A lot of these places looked like they had been offices. He tried to imagine what they had looked like before. What kind of people had worked here. Where they were now. Whether they were gone like Dr. Japer’s family. Like all the people whose names he heard whispered sometimes.

Like his dad.

He wondered, sometimes, which office had been his dad’s, or whether there was enough left for him to find out.

Right now, this office was just a room, with two and a half walls, scorched and broken, the remains of a desk and chair, and large, metal file cabinet in the corner. It was the most intact thing in the room: it was still dented and damaged on the outside, but it was standing up.

But when he stepped toward it, he could feel the floor tip just a bit under his weight, and he swore the file cabinet creaked.

He paused. He swallowed.

He checked everywhere else in the room first, just in case, even though he already knew he wouldn’t find them there. If they were still there, if they were still intact, then he knew where they would be. But he checked anyway.

Everything in the desk had been destroyed. There was nothing by the other walls or under the chair. The entire room was nothing but ash.

Ash, and that file cabinet.

So finally, Papyrus took a deep breath and approached it.

He knew it wasn’t inside the file cabinet—Dr. Japer had said it wasn’t inside of anything. Besides, he didn’t dare touch the drawers, given how the cabinet was already creaking more the closer he got. But there was a little bit of space underneath it, and after another long pause, he got down on his knees, peering underneath the cabinet, at the scorched floor below.

And there they were.

At least, he was pretty sure that was them. Dr. Japer had said she kept them in a little purple box, and that was what he saw, near the back.

He glanced up at the file cabinet, and the legs keeping it a few inches from the ground. It didn’t look very sturdy, and he could hear it squeaking from this close, like it might collapse at any second. He looked at the photos, so far that he didn’t even know if he could reach them.

Then Dr. Japer’s face flashed into his head. Hopeful. Grateful.

He had lost count of how many times he had come here, hoping to gain her approval. How many times he had gotten it briefly, only to lose her attention to something else within minutes. He knew that if he went back with these photos, it wouldn’t change anything. It never would.

But … it would still make her happy.

And if he could make her happy, just one more time …

He set his browbone, gritted his teeth, and reached under the cabinet.

For more than a minute, he stretched his arms out as far as he could, angling his head and shoulders as he tried to touch the box. Once or twice, his fingertips brushed the surface, but never enough for him to get a grip.

And after two minutes, the squeaking in the cabinet got louder.

Papyrus froze.

The cabinet squeaked again.

Then it creaked, a loud, threatening crack, and Papyrus began to crawl back, pulling his arms out with him.

But just as he had scooted back enough to free his elbows, the cabinet creaked again.

And collapsed right onto his arms.

It took all Papyrus had not to scream.

He lay there, sucking in air he knew he didn’t need but it _felt_ like he needed it and he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t think, everything _hurt_ and he just wanted it to stop, why wouldn’t it stop, please just _stop_ but he couldn’t move it and it wouldn’t stop hurting and tears brimmed in his eyes even though he refused to let them fall.

He didn’t know how long it took for his breath to come back. The pain dulled, but didn’t go away. It was still there. On top of his arms. Heavy and hard and crushing him. He opened his eyes, blinking against the tears. He stared ahead of him, focusing on the hunk of metal that had fallen on his hands. He tried to sit up, and it was like knives slicing into his fingers. He tried again, despite the pain, and got a little further up before collapsing again. He gritted his teeth, furrowed his browbone, and lowered himself as far toward the ground as he could. He slid his hands out, bit by bit, stopping every few seconds to bite back another cry.

Then he could see them, in front of him, and looking at them hurt almost as bad as the pain itself.

All of his fingers were still hanging on. Mostly. Some of them only had little cracks, but the others … the others had cracks so deep, so thick, that it looked like his fingers were about to fall off. He couldn’t move them, he couldn’t feel them, all he could feel was the agony radiating up his arms and making his breath catch in his throat.

He didn’t know how long he sat there on the floor, biting back the sobs that threatened to choke him every time he breathed. He wondered whether he would ever be able to move again. Whether anyone would come looking for him if he couldn’t get up. Whether he would die here, alone and scared and hurting so, _so_ bad.

Undyne would never know what had happened to him.

Or Sans.

He … he couldn’t leave them. He had to go back. Even if it was just so they wouldn’t worry, even if it hurt more than anything in the world, he _had_ to go back.

His legs trembled as he tried to get to his feet. It was his arms that were hurt, his arms that were crushed, but it felt like the pain was in his whole body, keeping him from moving or thinking like he should. He stumbled three times before he finally stood up on still-shaky legs, his head dizzy and his arms stinging so bad that it took all he had not to cry.

But he was up. He was up, and if he was up, then he could walk.

He looked at the cabinet. He stared at it for a long, long time. He swore he could see the photos underneath it, crushed underneath the same weight had made his hands feel like they were going to fall apart.

Tears brimmed at the edges of his eyes, but he didn’t let them fall.

Then he turned around, slowly, carefully, and started out of the wreckage, trudging through each slow, painful step back toward home.

* 

He barely made it into his room without Sans or Dr. Japer seeing him.

He had had practice, and he could be quiet, even if most of the time he didn’t want to be.

It took three times longer than usual to bandage his hands. He had never hurt his _hands_ before, and it was both of them, so he couldn’t easily use one of them to work on the other. He did his right hand first, then his left, because it was much, much harder to bandage with that much medical tape wrapped around his bones, even with his dominant hand. Every movement hurt, but he definitely wasn’t going to cry now. Not when others could hear him.

Sans knocked on his door after a few minutes, asking him if he was alright, but Papyrus just told him he was changing clothes and would be out in a few minutes. He wasn’t sure if Sans believed him, but he never tried to get in.

When they were done, when they were all wrapped up and the bones weren’t shifting around and hurting every time they moved, he stopped. He looked down at them and stared.

People would notice.

People would notice as soon as he walked out the door. Sans would, and Undyne would, and even Dr. Japer probably would. People would see him when he walked around town, they would see his hands and wonder what happened, and he didn’t know what to tell them, what could he tell them, he didn’t want to lie but he couldn’t tell the truth, he didn’t know why but he couldn’t tell the truth so …

He couldn’t let anyone see them.

If they didn’t see them … they wouldn’t find out.

So he had to hide them.

But … how?

They weren’t wrapped up so bad that they looked like big lumps, he could still see his fingers, even if he couldn’t use them. He could put his hands in his pockets, but Sans would know something was wrong. Papyrus _never_ put his hands in his pockets. He could put them behind his back, but that was even more obvious. There was no way that Sans _wouldn’t_ look at his hands if they were visible. Sans missed a lot, but Papyrus didn’t think he would miss this. He looked around the room, fidgeting more by the second, searching for anything he could use to hide the bandages.

Then he saw them.

A pair of bright red gloves he had bought with his allowance last year.

He didn’t wear them very often. It wasn’t like he got cold. But they had been pretty and one of his favorite colors and it was so rare that he got the chance to buy something extra. So he had picked them out and taken them home and placed them right on top of his dresser. Even if he wasn’t going to wear them, they could at least make his room look nicer.

Sans knocked again, and without thinking, Papyrus crossed the room and pulled on the gloves. They were tight with the bandages, but they still fit, and from what he remembered, they didn’t look much different than they had when he tried them on the first time.

He gritted his teeth, walked to the door, and pulled it open.

And there was Sans, standing on the other side, his hand already in the air, ready to knock again.

They stood there, frozen, staring at each other, for a good ten seconds. Then Sans dropped his hand, and Papyrus swallowed back the anxiety building in his throat.

“HELLO, SANS,” he said, smiling just as wide as he always did. “DID YOU NEED SOMETHING?”

Sans blinked. Then he blinked several more times, looking Papyrus up and down, searching for something he apparently didn’t find.

“you okay, bro?” he asked at last, hesitant. “you … ran in here kinda fast. everything alright?”

Papyrus stood up as straight as he could.

“OF COURSE IT IS! EVERYTHING’S FINE! I JUST REMEMBERED SOMETHING I WANTED TO SHOW UNDYNE BUT I COULDN’T REMEMBER WHERE I PUT IT SO I WANTED TO MAKE SURE I COULD FIND IT.”

Sans raised half his browbone. “i thought you said you were changing clothes.”

“I WAS!” Papyrus said, and his voice sounded like a squeak but he cleared his throat afterward and it went away. “I THOUGHT OF THE THING I WANTED TO SHOW UNDYNE BECAUSE I SAW SOMETHING LIKE IT IN THE DUMP BUT THE DUMP IS REALLY DIRTY SO WHEN I WAS THERE I GOT REALLY DIRTY SO I RAN UPSTAIRS TO FIND THE THING BUT ALSO TO CHANGE AND STOP FEELING GROSS.”

It was … scary, how easily the lie came out. How easily it came to his head, how easily he said it. He had lied before, in small ways. But this … this felt different. This was something important. This was something Papyrus knew that Sans would want to know. Something Sans would probably be mad to find out that Papyrus didn’t tell him.

Well … that just meant that Papyrus had to make absolutely sure that Sans never found out.

So he kept smiling. He kept looking at his brother like nothing was wrong, like this was the most ordinary conversation in the world. Like his hands weren’t still aching from inside his gloves. Like his eyesockets weren’t burning with tears he was never going to shed.

Sans looked at him, his browbone furrowed, his smile tight. And finally, some of the tension in his shoulders slipped away, and he gave a very small nod.

“okay. if you’re sure.”

“OF COURSE I’M SURE!” Papyrus said, very fast, but not too fast. “I’M ALWAYS SURE!”

Sans nodded, slowly, still looking a little concerned. Then he turned around and walked back down the hall, and Papyrus slipped back into his own room and closed the door as fast as he could without sounding like a slam.

He stood there for a long, long time, his back pressed against the door, his gloved hands held close to his torso. His eyes tried to look at them a few times, but he always forced them back. It was easier if he didn’t look at them. It was easier if he pretended they weren’t there.

It was easier to pretend that the tears weren’t building in his sockets, threatening to spill the second his guard fell.

Finally, he pushed himself away from the door and stood as tall as he could, his legs shaking, his hands aching, his mouth pressed into a tight, trembling line.

He was fine. Everything was fine. He just had to keep his hands hidden while they healed, and then everything would go back to normal.

But no matter how many times he told himself that, no matter how much he smiled and nodded and told himself that it was definitely the truth, there was still a part of him that didn’t quite believe it.

 

* 

He didn’t take the gloves off for a week.

There was no avoiding Sans, or Dr. Japer, but he called Undyne and told her he wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be able to meet with her for a little while. She was disappointed, but more worried than anything, and he barely managed to convince her not to come by the house and bring him “comfort spaghetti.” He spent most of his time in his room. Dr. Japer wasn’t happy when he told her he couldn’t find her photos, but when she saw him rubbing his hands, something shifted in her face, and she didn’t bring it up again.

Sans was worried about him. Papyrus knew that, and he knew there was nothing he could do to fix it. He didn’t like Sans worrying about him. Sans had his own things to worry about. He didn’t need to worry about Papyrus when Papyrus was fine. He was. He really was.

He tried not to think about his hands, but it was difficult not to when he saw them so much. He tried not to look at them, but they were really very obvious, and they were his _hands._ He had been looking at him all his life, and it was hard to break the habit.

But he didn’t take off the gloves. He didn’t want to risk anyone seeing what was under them, and honestly, it was easier if he could just forget the bandages were there.

His hands hurt less and less as each day went by. Sometimes they hurt worse. Sometimes they woke up him in the middle of the night and he lay there in bed panting and telling himself no, no no _no,_ he wasn’t back there, he was fine, his hands were fine, everything was fine.

After a week, the pain had faded to almost nothing, and one afternoon, when Sans and Dr. Japer were at work, he locked himself in his room and pulled off the gloves. It was difficult, since he couldn’t move his fingers very well, but he managed it, and after another ten minutes, he had pulled off the bandages, too, letting them fall to the floor as he looked down at his bare hands.

His fingers were straight. Mostly. Some of them were still tilted a little wrong.

But the bone that had once been smooth was now marred with cracks, like spiderwebs all over his hands. He curled his hands and straightened them out, and winced with every movement. Maybe it would get easier as time passed by. But the cracks … they hardly looked better than they had a week ago. And he knew how cracks healed. If they didn’t heal much in the first week … would they heal at all?

Anyone would be able to see them. Even from a distance. Sans would notice. Undyne would notice. And they would ask what happened.

What was he supposed to tell them?

They wouldn’t like what he was doing for Dr. Japer. They wouldn’t like the idea of him putting himself in danger. They would get mad at her.

Would they be mad at him, too?

He couldn’t let them find out. He couldn’t let them see.

And that meant … he couldn’t let them see his hands.

He put the bandages under his bed. He would take them to the dump sometimes and leave them there—he wasn’t going to risk throwing them away in the house and letting anyone see them in the trash. He took a long look at his hands, trying to remember what they had looked like before. He swallowed hard, once, then again, harder still.

Then he picked up the gloves and pulled them back on.

He liked the gloves. He really did. They were a nice color, and they were comfortable, and he thought they looked really really cool. He did. This … this would be fine. Sure, he might not be able to do as many things with his hands … it might be harder to hold onto pencils. And … and he wouldn’t be able to draw as easily. And …

… he wouldn’t be able to play the violin.

But … but that was okay. It was all okay. They were cool gloves, and … he could still use this hands. He still had hands. So … it would be fine. He could do this. He was fine. Everything was fine.

He held his hands close to his chest, feeling the fabric of the gloves against his broken fingers, forcing a smile onto his face even as he began to tremble under his gloves.

Yes. Everything was fine.

* 

Papyrus stood behind the wall, just out of sight, listening to her play, for more than ten minutes before he finally poked his head out.

He watched her fingers fly over the keyboard, effortless, smooth, passionate and easy. He knew she had gotten faster since he met her, more skilled, but in his eyes, she had always been this good. Her songs had always sounded perfect. It was so different than watching her fight, yet at the same time, it was exactly the same. She didn’t think. She acted on instinct, and whether fighting or playing, he could see every emotion as it crossed her face, untainted and raw.

She finished the song with a flourish he didn’t remember hearing before, smiling down at the piano like she might smile at a partner in crime. Then she looked over her shoulder and froze.

Her whole face lit up in a grin.

“There you are!”

She was out of her seat before he could register her moving, and crossed the space between them in seconds, sweeping him up in a hug that almost knocked him over. She squeezed him tight enough to hurt, but he bit back a whimper of pain and hugged her back. Despite the ache, it still felt good.

“I missed ya, you little punk!” She gave him one more tight squeeze before plopping him back down to the ground, grinning like mad. “Guess I gotta stop calling you ‘little,’ though. You’re almost as tall as I am!”

Papyrus smiled. It wasn’t as big a smile as he used to give, but it was still a smile.

Apparently not a convincing one, though.

Undyne frowned.

“Hey, you okay?” she asked. “You still feeling cruddy?”

Papyrus hesitated. He had thought over several possible things to say, and none of them sounded very good. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened and closed it a few more times. No words came out. And a few seconds later, Undyne’s eyes dropped to his hands, and her brow furrowed.

“What’s with the gloves?”

Papyrus tensed, but managed to keep himself from jolting.

“I … UM … JUST LIKE WEARING THEM.”

Undyne frowned and looked up at him, then back down at the gloves. She lifted one to get a better look at it, and Papyrus did his best not to wince when he gripped his hand a little too tight.

“Huh. Well, I guess they’re pretty cool. Good color for you,” she said, dropping his hand and looking back to him with a beaming grin. “So! You up to some practice? I hope you haven’t gotten rusty.”

She slapped him on the shoulder and laughed, and Papyrus tried to laugh back, because it was a joke, it was just a joke, she didn’t mean anything, she didn’t know, and he wasn’t going to be sad, he wasn’t sad, he was with his friend and everything was fine, everything was …

Undyne’s smile fell, and she frowned again.

“Hey, where’s your violin?”

Papyrus’s breath hitched in his throat, but he smiled right through it. “I … DON’T REALLY FEEL LIKE PLAYING TODAY.”

Undyne paused. She looked him up and down, a little more thoroughly than before.

“You sure you’re okay?” she asked, in that quiet, concerned voice she got sometimes, when she was really, actually worried.

“OF COURSE!” Papyrus said, before he could think of saying anything else. His voice squeaked a little, but he was still smiling, and he held himself tall like she had taught him, this was how to look strong, this was how to be strong because he _had_ to be strong. “I’M FINE! I’M JUST … NOT REALLY IN THE MOOD TO PLAY THE VIOLIN. THAT’S ALL.”

He wasn’t sure if she believed him. She still looked worried. She stared at him for a few more seconds, then sighed.

“Well … okay. If you’re sure,” she said. “You wanna do something else?”

The relief washed over him so hard and fast that he thought he might fall over. He smiled, a little more easily this time, and thought. He rubbed his teeth together, glancing around the room, before his eyes finally landed on the piano by the wall.

“CAN YOU … MAYBE PLAY SOMETHING?”

She paused again, but nodded before he had the chance to worry that she would say no.

“Sure,” she said, crossing the room to flop down on the bench. “Any requests?”

Papyrus straightened up. “THE BEETHOVEN ONE, PLEASE?”

Undyne raised an eyebrow. “Fur Elise? I haven’t played that in forever.”

Papyrus’s smile softened, and he fidgeted a little under her gaze.

“IT WAS ONE OF THE FIRST SONGS YOU EVER PLAYED FOR ME.”

Undyne got a funny look on her face, like she did when she was thinking something very sappy but didn’t want to let anyone know that she was anything other than tough. She cleared her throat and shrugged.

“Sure, why not? But no making fun of me if I screw up. I haven’t practiced this in a while.”

She gave him a quick, half-hearted noogie, much gentler than the ones she usually gave, as if she were worried she was going to hurt him. He nodded, standing up a little straighter as she made her way across the room and flopped down in front of the piano. She paused, looking down at the keys, like she was imagining herself playing the entire song, before she brought her fingers down.

It was just as beautiful as he remembered it.

Papyrus sat down on the ground after the first minute, as Undyne settled into the rhythm of the song, her expression shifting as the notes changed. If she made any mistakes, he didn’t notice. He just closed his eyes and focused on the sound, imagining her fingers moving without conscious thought.

He wasn’t sure when he started imagining the violin piece he had learned to accompany it, or when he began to feel the familiar tingle in his fingers, as if he were holding down strings and moving the bow over them. He could still hear the sounds he had spent years perfecting, the smooth notes that had replaced the early screeches when he didn’t know how hard to press or where to put his fingers.

He could still hear Undyne’s cheering when he mastered a new piece. He could still feel the warmth in his chest as he heard his own music and it was good, he _knew_ it was good, even if he never let Sans or Dr. Japer hear it, Undyne did, and she told him it was good but she didn’t need to because he _knew._

He knew.

And he would never hear it again.

He smiled through the pain, smiled because it was one of the most beautiful sounds he had ever heard, no matter how much it hurt. Smiled for all the memories that would never repeat themselves, all the memories he tucked away very carefully in the back of his mind, even if that was all they would ever be. Even if they would stay there, untouched, for the rest of his life.

It wasn’t until he heard the music stop and felt Undyne kneel in front of him and wipe her fingers under his sockets that he realized he was crying.

And he didn’t even have time to open his mouth and explain before she pulled him into a hug and held him tight.

* 

He tried not to be sad about his hands. They were just two parts of his body, after all—he still had the rest of him, and besides, he could use his hands for _some_ things. He could pick up utensils and eat food, even though he was a little messy about it sometimes. He could pick other things up. And he could do high-fives! It hurt a little every time for the first few weeks—especially if he high-fived Undyne—but that began to fade as his hands healed.

The cracks remained, and as the pain faded, it became clear that they weren’t going to get any better.

He tried not to mind. It didn’t work.

He stopped taking the gloves off after the first month. All it did was make him sad when he saw his hands, and there was no point making himself sad when it was already difficult to make himself happy.

Undyne was worried about him. He knew that. She wasn’t good at hiding when she was worried. She didn’t ask why he was crying that first time, and he was very careful not to cry again, but she still worried.

She tried to get him to play his violin. To do a duet with her, like they used to.

Once, she told him that she had been asked to play at a Hotland restaurant, and wanted him to accompany her. She started to say something else, but stopped, mouth open, eyes wide, before clamping her mouth shut and telling him it was fine. If he couldn’t come, that was okay.

He knew he hadn’t been crying. But apparently he didn’t need to cry for her to see the tears in his head.

Even though she was worried, they still hung out like they had before. She played piano when he asked her to, but the rest of the time she seemed to avoid it, as if she didn’t like playing alone, even though she had played alone for a long time before he learned the violin. They talked, and they cooked, because he could still hold a spoon and sometimes he could even manage a knife. They ran around Waterfall and had water fights in the pond and he loved that, because then it didn’t matter that he was wearing gloves, then it didn’t matter that he couldn’t use his fingers the same way, then … then he could pretend that nothing had changed at all.

At least until the gloves got soaked and he had to take them off at home.

But Undyne was still busy a lot of the time. She loved her job, and she was good at it, and she spent a lot of time on it, so Papyrus spent a lot of his afternoons and weekends by himself. Sometimes he stayed home, but sometimes he wandered around Snowdin. He waved at people, and they waved back, and he felt normal, for a few seconds, until they looked away.

Sometimes he went further out, past the boundaries of Snowdin, closer to the forest. The only people out there were the Guards, and they left him alone—or at least they did after he threw a couple of bones for them to play with. He would try to get them to stay longer, but they would just pick up his bones and leave, and he would be left standing there, watching them run, before he sighed, turned around, and continued on his way.

It was on a day like that when he first decided to make something out of the snow.

Or, well, he didn’t _decide_ to do it. He just … did it. He saw a bunch of nice fresh snow, walked up to it, and started to form it into a pile. A pile almost as tall as he was. Then he grabbed more snow and started to pat it in, forming a basic shape before knocking off little bits to put in the details.

He didn’t really think about what he was making as he was forming it. He had made snowmen before, and snowwomen, and snow people, and snow children. Snow skeletons were a little more difficult, because they were so skinny, but he had tried to make those, too.

But this was different. Before, he had been thinking about what he was doing as he did it. He had been trying to mimic something one of the other kids did. Now … now he just sculpted, grabbing more snow and patting it on and shaping it without thinking. He had an image in his head, that got sharper and sharper as the time went by. But he didn’t totally realize what he was making until his hands fell away and he stepped back to look at his work.

It was Undyne.

A snow Undyne.

It looked so much like her that for a second, he wondered if she had somehow snuck into the pile of snow and let him mold it around her. It had her wide, toothy grin, her flowing hair, her bright, burning eyes. Just … all white.

Papyrus found himself smiling back at her—it?—standing up a little taller as he admired his work.

It wasn’t music, but … it was good. It was definitely good. It was very good. It … it had to be, he could _do_ this, even with the gloves he could _do_ this. He could make something beautiful, all on his own.

He thought Undyne would like it. Probably. But Undyne didn’t like to come to Snowdin, not without a very good reason, and even though he thought this was a good reason, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her about it.

A week later, he came to check on the sculpture, only to find that it had been knocked down.

He made another. And another after that. Sometimes of Undyne, sometimes of Sans, sometimes of himself. He started to make one of Dr. Japer, but he got uncomfortable as soon as he started to make her face, so he made one of the shopkeeper instead.

That was how he spent most of his time after that. When Sans was at work and Dr. Japer was in her office or at the lab and Undyne was training with the Guard. Sometimes he wished that Dr. Japer would ask him to go back to the wreckage, even though it terrified him, even though nothing in the world sounded worse, sometimes he wondered if it would make him feel better. Then he would look at his hands, and the wish would go away.

Dr. Japer never asked. She hardly talked to him at all nowadays.

He went on with his sculptures. He went to school. He did his homework. He went to sleep. Sometimes, if he was lucky, and she was free, he hung out with Undyne. Every day, he tried to keep smiling. Every day, he tried not to think about his hands, or about Dr. Japer, or about everything he missed about the way things were before.

Six months later, Sans told him they were moving out.

He said it really quietly at first, and Papyrus wasn’t sure if he had heard him right. He had a funny look on his face. Something like relief. Not happiness, but … the sort of look he got after he had worked a really long day but he brought home more money than usual.

Papyrus had forgotten that Sans was saving up for their own house. He had told him once, years ago, but they were little then and wouldn’t have been able to buy their own house even if they had the money because apparently adults didn’t sell houses to kids.

He had seemed so excited then. So … hopeful. He had a light in his eyes that Papyrus had almost forgotten existed. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen it.

There was no light there now. Sans was still smiling, because he was always smiling, but he didn’t look happy.

But Papyrus supposed “relieved” was better than usual.

They had packed up their stuff and moved it all to the new place in a week. Sans had already found a house and made a payment on it—it was big, it was in Snowdin, and Papyrus liked it a lot. They didn’t have much stuff, and the house felt like more room than he would ever get used to. But it was theirs. That was what Sans kept saying. It was _theirs,_ and while they were in it, they could do whatever they wanted.

Papyrus wondered how long that had been the most important thing for Sans.

He didn’t ask.

Dr. Japer was … hard to read, when they told her they were leaving, and harder to read on the day they left for good. In a way, she was the same as she had always been: distant and a little bit sad. But Papyrus swore there was something else in her face as well. Something even further away, muffled, faint. Something he wouldn’t have a name for even if he could see it clearly.

When the day came for them to move the last of their stuff, to sleep in their new house for the first time, to leave for good, he thought she might say something. She stood there, on the porch, looking at them with wide eyes and pursed lips, and she looked like she might say something. But she didn’t.

Papyrus couldn’t tell whether she might have said something if Sans hadn’t been standing right next to him.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know whether she might have asked him for another favor, if he had been alone.

But she didn’t, and they left with only a goodbye and a wave.

That first night, Sans said he was too tired to set up his own bed, and asked whether he could share Papyrus’s for that night. Papyrus could have set up Sans’s bed in ten minutes, but he said yes, without hesitating. As soon as they lay down, they wrapped their arms around each other and held tight, as if they were the only other people in the world. As if they were the only people who mattered.

Papyrus pretended not to hear Sans crying.

The next day, things went back to normal. Or … whatever normal would be for them now. They finished unpacking. Papyrus set up Sans’s bed, and the next night, they slept on their own. Sans went to work, and though Papyrus brought up the idea of getting a job himself, Sans brushed him off, insisting that he was making enough money to take care of them both. Papyrus decided not to mention that earning money himself, having something to do during the day, something important, something that _mattered,_ sounded nice anyway.

He went to see Undyne when he could, but she was busy most of the time with her own position in the Royal Guard. She made time for him, of course. She always did. She didn’t play piano as much nowadays. She played when he asked her to, but she was never the one to bring it up. He pretended it didn’t bother him.

And when Sans and Undyne were both at work, he sat at home. He kept the house as clean as he could. He tried cooking, but it wasn’t as much fun without Undyne there at his side, and after he almost burned the kitchen down, he decided against using the stove when he was home alone. Sometimes he still went out and made snow sculptures. No one saw them. Sometimes they would fall apart on their own, and sometimes someone would knock them down while he was away. He just made more.

The whole time, his violin sat in his closet, gathering dust in the corner. Several times, he thought about giving it to someone else, maybe even back to Gerson. But then people would ask questions, and he didn’t think he could answer them.

And every time he thought about letting go of the violin, his hands started to shake, and he didn’t think he would even be able to pick it up to take it out of the closet.

So it stayed.

He went about his days, and he tried to forget about everything he had lost, and focus on everything he still had left.

After two months, Dr. Japer hadn’t visited once, and aside from brief glimpses as they walked through town, Papyrus hadn’t heard from her at all.

Sans never said anything about her, but Papyrus wondered, sometimes, whether she missed them.

He wondered, once, whether he missed her. 

*

In his not humble and very proud opinion, this Snow Papyrus was the best one he had made yet.

And he had made a lot so far. Ten, last time he had checked. Ten Papyruses, and fifteen Sans’s, and seventeen Undyne’s, and twelve more of other people he had made around town.

Of course, he didn’t have any photos of them, and all the others had been knocked down by now. But he remembered them. He remembered every single one.

No one else had seen them so far. Well, except the random people who might have knocked them over in the past. He wondered sometimes if they liked them before they knocked them over. Maybe they knocked them over by accident. Or maybe they were just so impressed by the beauty of them that they couldn’t stand to see them any longer.

That was a good reason. He liked that reason. So he tried, very hard, to tell himself that it was true.

He stood there for a while and admired his work, and tried to imagine how the sculpture would sound if it were a song. Maybe something … peppy. Bright. He could almost feel himself playing it, the shift of the bow with each note, the—

He stopped.

His smile fell.

Then it rose again.

It was a very good sculpture. And it was beautiful even if it didn’t have a song to go along with it.

Maybe … maybe he could get Sans to come see this one before it was knocked down. It was Saturday, and Sans usually got off his shift by now. They didn’t hang out very often nowadays, and Sans usually took naps when he wasn’t at work, but … maybe Papyrus could still convince him to come.

Sans always seemed interested when Papyrus told him about his day, no matter what he had done. So surely he would be even more interested to see something he had _made_.

Papyrus started back to the house, glancing over his shoulder several times to make sure that his sculpture was still there and hadn’t spontaneously fallen over. It smiled back at him, its snow-arm in the air, and Papyrus smiled and waved back.

He walked a little faster than he normally did, hoping that if he got there quicker, maybe his chances of getting Sans to come would be higher. His soul thumped as his house came into view, and he bounded up onto the porch, reaching out for the door handle.

Then he stopped.

Because there was someone else in the house.

Someone yelling.

Someone who … wasn’t Sans. It wasn’t even Dr. Japer.

“—happening to him!”

Someone who sounded very, very much like Undyne.

But … Undyne almost never came to Snowdin. She _hated_ Snowdin. She said she always felt like her fins were going to freeze and fall off as soon as she left Waterfall. He had insisted she visit his new house when he and Sans moved in, and she had bundled herself up with all the clothes she owned, sprinted all the way from Waterfall to his house, and spent the rest of the day warming up before making the trek back.

Undyne never came to Snowdin on her own. But … he knew her voice. And that was definitely her voice.

Papyrus blinked, then leaned a little closer to the wood of the door.

“what would you know about taking care of him?”

That was Sans. It was quiet, Sans’s voice was always quiet, but it was louder than usual, like he was upset. He either got louder or really, really quiet when he was upset.

“More than you do!” Undyne yelled back. “Something’s wrong with him, and if you really care about him as much as you say you do, you would’ve noticed.”

“don’t you _dare_ —”

“Don’t I dare _what?”_ Undyne spat, and she was tall, she was really tall and Papyrus could imagine her towering over his brother, her teeth gritted and her fists clenched. “Say you don’t care about him?”

There was silence for a few seconds. Papyrus pressed his skull closer to the wood, he knew it was wrong, he knew he wasn’t supposed to be eavesdropping, it was rude, but … but this was his house and he was just going home and if he came in they would stop talking and they were talking about him he knew they were talking about him and if he left now they would never tell him what they meant and … and …

“everything i do, i do so he can have a better life,” Sans said, and he was quiet, so quiet Papyrus could barely hear him, and he didn’t have to see his face to know his eyelights had gone out. “so he doesn’t have to … live with everything i do, so he doesn’t—”

“But you’re never _there_ for him,” Undyne cut him off. “You don’t _know_ him.”

“and you _do_? ”

“Better than you!” she said, and she was angry but she sounded sad, too. She paused again. “And he doesn’t even tell me everything. He tries to hide it but I know something’s wrong with him and he won’t tell me what it is. And if he’s not telling you either, that probably means he’s not telling anybody.”

She made a noise that sounded like a huff.

“I wonder where he gets that from.”

Sans didn’t say anything. Papyrus wanted to look in through one of the windows, see what his face looked like, they both seemed upset and Papyrus didn’t want them to be upset but if he went in, if they saw him, they would stop talking and they would _still_ be upset and they _wouldn’t tell him._

“He misses you, you know,” Undyne went on. “He worries about you.”

Sans snorted. “he thinks i’m lazy. just like everyone does.”

“You really think he buys that face you put on?” she asked. “He’s your brother. Give him some credit.”

Papyrus felt himself smiling, just a little bit. It wasn’t a happy smile.

“You’re out at work all the time, I don’t care if you’re napping while you’re there. You’re hardly ever home with him, he never sees you, he always tells me he doesn’t know anything about you. And it’s pretty clear you don’t know anything about him.”

“i know _everything_ about him—”

“How? How much time have you spent with him in the last month? In the last _year_?” she pressed, and she was angry again, she was angry and sad and Papyrus hated it, he wanted to just open the door and end it and … and … “Weren’t you living with someone who was taking care of you before? She was paying for everything, wasn’t she? Or at least she was willing to. You don’t have to work this much. You could just go ba—”

“no,” Sans cut her off, hard and clear. Papyrus shivered, and Undyne went silent. “i’m not going back there.”

Both of them were quiet for a long, long time. So long that Papyrus started to think that they weren’t going to say anything else, that the conversation was over, maybe Sans had done that thing where he scared people who he thought were trying to hurt them but Undyne _wasn’t_ trying to hurt them and she would never let herself be scared away from something she thought was important.

Papyrus was just beginning to reach for the doorknob when Undyne spoke up again.

“Did she do something to you guys?”

Sans didn’t reply at first. But a few seconds later, he sighed, loud enough for Papyrus to hear through the door.

“no. she didn’t—not like … she never laid a hand on us. but she didn’t want us there.”

“But she took you in,” Undyne said. She sounded confused. “She’s not even your … biological family. She didn’t have to.”

Sans snorted again. There was no humor in it. “she was my dad’s co-worker. his _friend._ i guess she felt … obligated.”

Papyrus sunk down a little bit. He didn’t know why. But he swore he could still see Dr. Japer’s eyes, her face, her disappointed frown and occasionally, sometimes, if he did something right … her surprised, happy smile. The smile was there, sometimes. It was, it really was, just because Sans hadn’t seen it that didn’t mean … didn’t mean …

“i remember her before. kind of. she was … better then,” Sans went on. “she liked us then.”

He paused again, much shorter than before.

“then the accident happened.”

Papyrus flinched, just a little. Undyne didn’t say anything, didn’t make a noise, but he knew the expression people got on their faces when they talked about the accident. Sometimes it was sad. Sad for others. Sad for themselves, if someone had … been there when it happened. Sometimes sad for Sans and Papyrus.

Sans never said anything, when people said how sorry they were for what happened. But he looked sad.

Papyrus had figured out a long time ago that he wasn’t sad for the same reasons they were.

“Was she there?” Undyne asked at last, and she was still so quiet that Papyrus could hardly believe it was her. He didn’t know Undyne could _be_ that quiet.

“no,” Sans said, immediately. Then he paused. “her brother was. and her niece.”

“… Shit.”

There was silence for a few seconds, and Papyrus swore he could see both of them in his head, gritting their teeth and staring at the floor. He couldn’t decide for sure whether Undyne would look more angry or more sad.

“i saw them. before they died,” Sans went on.

Undyne didn’t say anything. It was weird, to know that Undyne was there but not to hear her speaking.

“they didn’t go fast,” Sans said, quietly, without emotion, like it had stopped affecting him years ago. Maybe it had. “it wasn’t pretty.”

If Papyrus listened very, very closely, he could hear Undyne’s breath shaking. But she still didn’t speak.

Sans sighed again.

“i don’t really remember what happened after that. she took us in. but she was never the same after that.”

Papyrus tried to remember the last time he had seen Sans look sad around him. Not the sort of distant sadness that hung over him all the time. Real sadness, the kind that he didn’t like other people to see. Or … the kind he didn’t like Papyrus to see.

The kind he didn’t mind Undyne seeing, even though he barely knew her.

He wanted to run inside and pull his brother into a hug, but he knew that the second he opened the door, Sans would shove the sadness back once again.

“i think she looked at us and saw him,” Sans said, even quieter now, and Papyrus swore he sounded ten years younger. “the person who killed her family.”

Undyne made an irritated hissing noise under her breath, and Papyrus could picture her shaking her head. “But … wasn’t it an accident?”

Sans scoffed.

“he was an idiot. a … brilliant idiot,” he replied, and there was hatred there, hatred and bitterness, but underneath it all Papyrus still made out a hint of love, of pain, of _loss_. “ he was reckless and did a big demonstration before his machine was ready, he'd only started it a year before, it was s'posed to help with the energy crisis, but he …”

And Papyrus could feel his face tensing up. _All_ of him tensing up. The love, the pain, faded away, and Papyrus had never quite remembered what Sans had looked like that day, he barely remembered anything about that day or anything before it, but now he could see a much smaller Sans with his eyelights gone out and his smile tight and forced looking like the world had just shattered around him.

“he killed himself and everyone else there.”

Screaming. Crying. The look on Dr. Japer’s face for weeks after they moved into her house. The way she stared at photos and bit her lip and held back the tears he could see glistening in her eyes.

Sans let out a long, heavy breath.

“i don’t want papyrus to have to live with that. i don’t want him to have to live in the shadow of someone he doesn’t even remember. what happened wasn’t his fault. he didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Neither did you,” Undyne said, her voice blank.

“that’s different.”

“How?”

Sans didn’t reply. Papyrus could hear Undyne gritting her teeth, hear her tensing up, he knew he couldn’t actually hear her face twisting but he had known her for too long not to see that look on her face in his head.

“He’s … he might be naive, and probably the most innocent person I’ve ever met, but he’s not made of glass,” she went on, the hesitance disappearing as the Undyne he knew began to shine through again. “And he wouldn’t want you dealing with all of this alone.”

Sans was silent for a long, long time. Papyrus pressed his whole body against the door, if it opened now he knew he would fall right again, but he didn’t care, he had to … if Sans was going to tell him anyway, then maybe—

“i’m not gonna tell him,” Sans said, determined, absolute, like a bomb crashing down into Papyrus’s skull. “and you better not say a thing.”

One second passed. Two. Three. Four.

“I won’t,” Undyne replied, quiet and absolute and as sharp as her spear. “That’s your job.”

Then Papyrus heard her footsteps marching toward the door, and he had only a few seconds to run off the porch and dive out of the way, scrambling to the side of the house, before the front door slammed open and Undyne walked through.

He didn’t watch her go. Listening was enough, and besides, he didn’t want to risk her seeing him.

And … he wasn’t sure if he wanted to see her right now, either.

He felt bad about that. Really bad about that. Undyne was … she was just worried. Just like Sans was worried. They were worried about him, she didn’t do anything mean, she was still his friend, he should want to see her, but …

He didn’t.

He waited until her footsteps had disappeared into the distance. Then he stepped out from the side of the house and looked at the front door.

He considered going inside. The snow sculpture didn’t seem important now, but … maybe they could have dinner together. Maybe they could talk.

Papyrus started toward the porch …

Then walked right past it.

His feet moved almost without permission, but he didn’t try to stop them. They carried him away from the house, toward the edge of Snowdin, and into Waterfall, but he didn’t stop them. He just walked, his head hanging low, his eyes locked on the snow as it melted and turned into muddy ground.

It had been a long time since he had listened to Sans talk about him without knowing he was there.

He had done it before, a few times. He didn’t like doing it, because … because it wasn’t right. It wasn’t right to stand there and listen to someone else’s conversation when they didn’t know you were there. It wasn’t right to do that to anyone, and it was even more not right to do that to someone you loved.

But … he never heard Sans really talk about him otherwise.

He still didn’t like doing it. It had been years since he had done it last. He knew Sans didn’t tell him the truth when he talked to him. He knew he didn’t want him to know the truth.

He _wanted_ to know the truth. But he didn’t want to hurt Sans even more. So he didn’t listen.

Sans wasn’t the only person who did that. Dr. Japer did it, sometimes. Once or twice he had come out of his room to hear Sans and Dr. Japer arguing downstairs, just quietly enough so that he couldn’t understand all their words, but loudly enough so that he could pick out his name. He knew his teachers at school did it. He knew the other kids did it. He knew adults who lived in Snowdin did it.

He just … hadn’t thought that Undyne did it, too.

He thought … he didn’t know what he thought. He hadn’t really thought about it before. Maybe he had thought … that when Undyne talked to him … she was _really_ talking to him. She was telling him all she had to say. All she had to say about him.

Maybe he thought that … if she was worried about him, she would ask him about it first.

Maybe he thought that she wouldn’t keep secrets from him.

But … Sans had secrets. Dr. Japer had secrets. Everyone he had ever met had secrets. So why did he think that Undyne would be different?

He knew she cared about him. She made that clear, even if she was very … blunt a lot of the time. And she still cared about him. This didn’t change that. It didn’t.

But …

But he had thought she believed in him, too.

Sans loved him. He had never doubted, for a second, that Sans loved him.

But Sans didn’t believe in him. He listened when Papyrus told him about a dream, and he encouraged him, told him he could do it, but … he didn’t believe it. Not really. Papyrus knew his face too well to believe otherwise.

Sans loved him, more than he loved anybody. But he didn’t tell him about his problems.

Sans loved him, more than anything in the entire world, but when he looked at Papyrus, he didn’t really see him.

Not the way he really was.

He saw a different Papyrus.

And maybe Papyrus had hoped that Undyne would see the Papyrus that was really there.

But maybe that was silly. If Sans couldn’t see him … if Dr. Japer couldn’t see him … then maybe no one could. Maybe it didn’t matter who he met. Maybe it didn’t matter how much they loved him. Maybe there was no one in the world who could see him.

Maybe there was no one in the world who believed in him.

Papyrus found his footsteps slowing, his head drooping to stare at the ground.

He loved Sans, and he loved Undyne. And he wanted them to be happy.

And if they were happier if he didn’t know what they thought about him … what they talked about … if he didn’t know all these things they didn’t want him to know … if they were happier seeing a different Papyrus than the one that was really there …

Then … he still wanted to make them happy.

Even if it made him sad.

Even if he didn’t understand why.

Even if … it made him wonder what other things Undyne hadn’t told him.

Even if it made him wonder if everything she had already told him was true.

Even if it made him wonder what was so wrong with the real Papyrus that no one wanted to see him.

He loved Undyne. And he would make her happy, so matter how much that made him sad.

He tried to lift his head, tried to smile, tried to nod and return to his usual confident stride. But … he couldn’t. He was … tired. Like he had just run a long way, except he _hadn’t_ run a long way, and besides, he was very good at running a long ways without getting tired. He was in the middle of Waterfall now. He didn’t know where he was going. He would have to go back home soon. Sans would be worried if he didn’t come home. But … he didn’t want to go home. He didn’t want to see Sans’s face.

And he had planned to meet up with Undyne tomorrow. But he wasn’t sure if he could stand to see her either.

Not like this. Not until he was ready to hold his head tall and pretend that everything was alright.

Maybe … maybe he just needed a little more time. Just a little more time. Then he would go back. Then it would be easier. He could wait a little longer. Dinner wasn’t for … an hour? Maybe two hours? He didn’t know how long he’d been out here. But it was close to that, he thought.

Just a little more time, and then he would go back with a smile on his face, and make sure that Sans and Undyne didn’t have to worry about him anymore.

He nodded to himself and took a long, striding step forward.

Then he heard the sound of something squishing into the mud, a second after his own foot hit the ground.

There were footsteps. Coming up behind him.

Papyrus stopped. The footsteps stopped, only a few feet away. He frowned, opened his mouth, and turned around with his best smile, ready to greet the stranger behind him.

Then something whacked into his head, cutting off his words and his breath and sending him tumbling off to the side.

The last thing he felt was a set of gentle arms catching him just before he could hit the ground. 

* 

When Papyrus woke up, he was in bed.

He was in _a_ bed, that is. But not _his_ bed.

He knew that even before he opened his eyes. He knew what his bed felt like, knew all the places where it was lumpy, could feel the little tear in it even through his sheets. He had learned to tell the difference because if it _wasn’t_ his bed, it either meant that he had fallen asleep on the ground in Waterfall with Undyne, or that he was sleeping over at her house. And if he was sleeping near her, there was a very good chance that she was going to wake him up with wrestling.

And he had to be ready, didn’t he?

But this didn’t feel like the ground in Waterfall, or the pull-out couch at Undyne’s house. He didn’t know what it _did_ feel like, but … it didn’t feel like any of those things.

His head hurt a little, but he still turned his head from side to side, pushing himself up and looking around the room. It wasn’t his room. It … was a little like his room. But there were more toys, and more books. A lot more books, all stuffed onto a shelf by the wall.

He pushed himself out of the bed, pausing for a second with his feet on the floor before he stood up, forcing himself to stand tall even though his legs wanted to wobble. This place wasn’t his room, but … it kind of smelt like his room. Except … dirtier. He always kept his room clean, he hated having a messy room, but this room felt like someone had left it alone for a long time. Left all their things to get dusty.

Was that why he was here? To clean?

No, that didn’t sound right. He was … he had been walking in Waterfall, right? And … something had happened. But … he couldn’t remember it.

And now he was here.

He just didn’t know where “here” was.

He walked around the room for a minute, looking at the bookshelf and the bed—that was a nice bed, it looked like something he would have picked out—and into the closet and it wasn’t his room, it definitely wasn’t his room, his violin wasn’t even there. And the clothes … they looked like they would fit him, but they weren’t _his_ clothes. So this definitely wasn’t his room.

But it … was?

He didn’t like this. He didn’t like being here, he wanted to know where he was, he wanted … he wanted Sans. Maybe Sans would know what was going on.

Was Sans here? He had to be here. Or … at least he had to be close. Sans was never too far away.

Before his thoughts could spiral any further, Papyrus stood up very tall, nodded to himself, crossed the room, and opened the door.

This wasn’t his house.

It _definitely_ wasn’t his house. He wasn’t even a little unsure about it. He knew that this wasn’t his house. It was a little similar, but he knew his house, and the kitchen was in the wrong place and the couch was the wrong color and the TV was in a different spot and yes this definitely was not his house, or Dr. Japer’s, or Undyne’s.

Was Sans here?

Or …

Papyrus opened his mouth, ready to call out for his brother.

Then something sounded to his left, and he stopped.

He turned.

And standing maybe five feet away from him, just coming out of a door down the hall, there was … a skeleton.

A skeleton who wasn’t his brother.

It took Papyrus a few seconds just to comprehend that fact. He had never seen a skeleton who wasn’t his brother. Well, he _had_ , but it had been when he was little and he didn’t remember what he looked like. For a moment, he thought maybe Sans was playing some sort of bad prank on him, dressing up like another skeleton to try and fool him, but … no, Sans couldn’t come up with something this elaborate. This skeleton looked completely different from him. He was much taller, even a little taller than Papyrus, with one big eye and one eye that drooped, and a totally different face shape from Sans.

And he was sure that Sans’s mouth didn’t open at all, while this skeleton’s teeth were parted, staring at him with an expression Papyrus had never seen before in his life.

He shifted.

“UM … HELLO,” he said. He swore the other skeleton flinched. He glanced from side to side, taking in everything around him one more time. “WHY AM I IN YOUR HOUSE?”

The skeleton hesitated. He stared at Papyrus a few seconds longer, like he was taking him in, like he thought he had to memorize him. Papyrus wondered why he didn’t just take a picture. Maybe he didn’t have a camera?

It was almost a minute later that the skeleton cleared his throat.

“You’re … staying here. With your brother. Don’t you remember?”

He said it with the tone someone might use when something was obvious. Except … different, somehow. Papyrus frowned. _Was_ it obvious? Had he forgotten coming over here? He didn’t think his memory was that bad, but …

“MY BROTHER?” he asked, as the second part of the skeleton’s words hit him. He glanced over his shoulder. “HE’S HERE?”

“He’s asleep in his room,” the skeleton replied, pointing toward the door right next to the room Papyrus had come from. “There.”

Papyrus stared at the door for a second, considering going back up the stairs and poking his head in, before turning to the skeleton again.

“ARE YOU ONE OF HIS FRIENDS?”

The skeleton paused, then nodded, but it was small and shaky, like he had to force it.

“Yes. We work together.”

He looked … nervous. A little. He looked like he was nervous but he was stuffing it down, trying to make his face look smooth, trying to make it look like he didn’t care. He reminded Papyrus of Sans, a little.

Papyrus turned his head in the direction the other skeleton had pointed, where his brother was supposedly sleeping. His shoulders remained tense, but when he turned back to the skeleton, he smiled.

“WELL, THEN IT IS GOOD TO MEET YOU, SANS’S COWORKER! MY NAME IS PAPYRUS. WHAT IS YOURS?”

He stuck out his hand, ready for a handshake, and the skeleton stared at it for a moment before reaching out and touching it, like he was afraid it might break. Papyrus thought that was silly, but maybe this skeleton was very strong and had to work very hard not to hurt people. Maybe he couldn’t control his strength as well as Papyrus. Well, as long as he was trying not to hurt people, that was good, right?

The skeleton held onto his hand a little longer than a lot of people did, then cleared his throat and looked away.

“… Gaster.”

“GASTER,” Papyrus repeated, and the name felt funny, it _sounded_ funny, it was like … he knew it, but he didn’t know it, and … he furrowed his browbone. “HAVE WE MET BEFORE?”

Gaster swallowed loud enough for Papyrus to hear, but when he looked at him again, his face was steady and blank and gave no sign that he was going to lie.

“… no.”

“OH,” Papyrus replied. He looked at Gaster a little longer, tilting his head. “THAT’S FUNNY. YOU SEEM VERY FAMILIAR.”

Gaster didn’t say anything to that.

Neither of them spoke for almost a minute after that. They stood there, looking at each other, glancing away every few seconds. There was more pain in Gaster’s eyes the longer Papyrus looked at him. He had seen him before. He was sure he had seen him before. But he couldn’t pick out where.

Finally, Gaster cleared his throat and turned away.

“I … need to go in to the—to work,” he said, tripping over his words as if they didn’t fit in his mouth right. “Sans should be awake soon, though. You can see him then.”

Papyrus swallowed and smiled as best as he could, standing up tall even as his body tried to sag.

“ALRIGHT.”

It wasn’t alright. It wasn’t alright at all. Papyrus didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be here without any sort of answers.

But he kept on smiling, as hard as it was, and finally, Gaster nodded and started down the stairs.

Papyrus looked at the door of the room that he had been sleeping in, then at the room that apparently belonged to Sans.

He didn’t like this. He didn’t like this at all.

But … if Sans was here, then it must be okay.

And Sans didn’t like for Papyrus to worry. If Papyrus was worried, it would only make Sans worry more.

Besides, there were plenty of things that Sans hadn’t told him. Maybe this was just one more.

It didn’t make sense. But neither did a lot of things. And Papyrus supposed that he should be used to it by now.

He looked up, and found Gaster on the middle of the staircase, still staring at him, his eyes wide and … pained.

Maybe something bad had happened. Maybe that was why they were here. Papyrus didn’t know what could have been so bad as to make him look like that, but … Sans was alright. Sans was here. If Sans was here … then everything had to be alright.

It had to be.

When he looked at Gaster again, he was walking the rest of the way down the stairs. Papyrus tried not to notice when he stopped again after he opened the front door, staring up at him as if he were the most important thing in the world.

It scared him. And Papyrus didn’t want to be scared.

Not any more than he already was.

He took a deep breath and pulled himself tall, glancing back at the door he had come out of.

Well. It was still early, by the looks of it. Sans wouldn’t be awake for a while. So Papyrus might as well use the time he had to get the room he was staying in a little bit cleaner.

Then … then maybe he could figure out what was going on.

He nodded to himself, stood up a little taller, and walked back into his room, doing his very best to ignore the eyes he could still feel locked on the back of his head.

Everything would be fine.

And maybe, if he thought that enough times, it really would be.


	4. Undyne and Papyrus (Part I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we're onto the new universe ... and the new Undyne. ;)

There was something really weird about Sans’s little brother.

That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Undyne liked weird, if it was the right kind of weird. Problem was, she still hadn’t figured out whether Papyrus’s kind of weird was _her_ kind of weird.

He wasn’t a jerk, by any definition of the word. He was a little too confident, probably more like arrogant, but she could respect that. He was motivated, and she could definitely respect that. Mostly what weirded her out was that he acted like he knew her, and yet, whenever she asked him _how,_ he claimed he didn’t know.

At first, she thought he had just heard of her like everyone else had. She was pretty well-known by this point, after all, despite not having been in the Royal Guard all that long, compared to some of the others. Maybe he had asked her to sign an autograph for him and she had forgotten about it. She signed plenty of autographs, it wasn’t like she could be expected to remember every single one.

But around the fifth time she saw him, when he was reluctant to let her leave, she told him it was “Royal Guard business,” and he immediately asked her when she had joined the Royal Guard.

She hadn’t asked him what he thought she _had_ been doing with her time yet.

Honestly, she wasn’t sure what _he_ did with his time. He didn’t seem to have a job. His brother worked, without a doubt—he took odd jobs here and there—even though he acted like just about the laziest person she had ever met. Papyrus was anything but lazy, moving nonstop, jogging around Snowdin and Waterfall and chatting with strangers, but she didn’t think he had an actual _job._ He would probably be good at plenty of things—she knew at least twenty people who would kill to have that much energy—but even so, he remained unemployed. And very persistent for her attention.

It was a few weeks after she met him that she first noticed that he showed up where she happened to be far more often than could be considered coincidence.

And he kept showing up, usually in the corner of her eye, somewhere off to the side where she would be less likely to notice him. But he was pretty hard to ignore. She didn’t exactly know a lot of skeletons—she wasn’t sure she had _ever_ met a skeleton before she met him and Sans—and besides that, he was just the sort of person that drew attention to himself.

She ignored it at first. He seemed like a bit of a fanboy, and she was willing to put up with that.

But when she found him trailing some distance behind her one afternoon, for an hour straight, no matter how many unexpected twists and turns she took in her path, she decided that it had gone a little too far.

She turned a corner and stopped, and when she heard him approach, keeping his footsteps as quiet as he could, she spun around and put her hands on her hips.

“Are you following me?”

It was quiet and not as intimidating as it might have been, but he still jolted, almost falling over in the shock of seeing her looking right at him. He froze, just staring at her as she stared at him, before he finally swallowed hard and fiddled with his gloves hands.

“… NO?”

“You _are,_ ” she said, and this time it came out like a growl.

He shrunk under her glare, wringing his hands and looking away.

“I JUST … I WANTED TO TALK TO YOU, BUT YOU SEEMED BUSY, AND I DIDN’T WANT TO BOTHER YOU BUT I DIDN’T WANT TO GO AWAY IN CASE YOU STOPPED BEING BUSY, SO I WAS JUST …”

He trailed off, lowering his gaze. He looked like one of the younger Snowdin Guards, the dogs, barely more than puppies, who hadn’t gotten used to her telling them off for mistakes. The older ones could take it, they knew when she was really mad and when she was just, well, _loud,_ but the younger ones took the slightest criticism as a complete failure on their part.

Except this guy took the “kicked puppy” look to a whole new level.

Undyne’s glare faded, and she clenched her fists to steady herself, clearing her throat.

“Hey,” she said, as gently as she could, though a bit of her frustration still slipped through. “It’s … it’s fine, okay?”

He looked up at her through the tops of his sockets, his head still low. She cleared her throat and shrugged.

“You can walk with me if you want. I’m just going to check up on some things.”

She knew he was a skeleton, and not actually a puppy, but damn, did he bounce back just as fast as they did.

He perked up like he had never been upset in the first place, his eyes bright, his smile wide, and his whole body screaming with excitement.

“OH! IS IT MORE ROYAL GUARD BUSINESS?”

“Sort of,” she muttered. Honestly, she was just patrolling. It was a quiet day, no problems, no complaints, and she didn’t have much work to do, so it wasn’t like having him around would keep her from anything important. She quirked an eyebrow. “Do you know me or something? Cause I don’t think I’d forget you.”

“OF COURSE NOT!” he said, grinning, though she could make out a slight pleased flush to his cheekbones. “I AM QUITE UNFORGETTABLE!”

It took her a few seconds to notice that he hadn’t answered her question.

She kept her eyebrow raised, looked him up and down, then shrugged again, turning around and starting on her way, where she had been going before she confronted him. He skipped after her, matching her stride to walk just to her left, grinning like an absolute idiot.

It was weird, but it was … also kind of adorable. In a weird way.

He looked like an adult, but with that personality, he could just as easily pass as a kid.

“So why do you wanna talk to me so much?” she asked.

He looked to her, and again, his expression turned sheepish, and he fidgeted a little as he walked.

“I … JUST …” He cleared his throat and pulled himself together a little bit. “YOU SEEM VERY COOL, AND AS I AM ALSO VERY COOL, I THOUGHT … PERHAPS … WE WOULD BE EVEN COOLER TOGETHER?”

Undyne looked at him, and he looked back. She blinked. She blinked again. Then she furrowed her brow.

“Are you asking me out?”

Papyrus tilted his head to one side, and seriously, she would have to ask whether he was somehow related to the dogs.

“WHERE WOULD I ASK YOU OUT TO?” he asked.

Undyne gave him a long, calculating look, and he just kept staring with those wide, innocent eyes. She waved him off.

“Nevermind,” she muttered. At least she wouldn’t have to have that conversation. She had turned down a few guys in the past, and while she had no problem doing so, it wouldn’t have been much fun to burst this kid’s bubble. She cleared her throat. “That’s … fine. I mean, if you wanna hang out … I’d be okay with that.”

Papyrus’s brow rose. He blinked.

Then he beaned.

“REALLY? WOWIE! THAT WOULD BE SO MUCH FUN! TO HANG OUT LIKE REAL FRIENDS HANG OUT!”

“Well, aren’t we?” she asked.

He tilted his head again. “WHAT?”

“Friends?”

He stared at her for a long, long moment, and she finally realized that they had both stopped walking.

“… ARE WE FRIENDS?” he asked, his voice somehow still like a shout even though it was a good deal quieter than normal. “IS THAT WHAT WE ARE DOING NOW? IS THIS A FRIEND THING?”

Undyne raised an eyebrow. Only now did she begin to question herself—she barely knew this guy, after all—but they _had_ talked a few times, and he was nice. That was enough to qualify as a friend, right? After a long pause, she shrugged.

“Sure. I guess.”

Papyrus squealed—actually full-out _squealed_ —and leapt forward to wrap her in a rib-crushing hug. Undyne had fought the toughest monsters in the underground and come out on top, but it still took her a second to shake off her shock and give him a quick hug in return, just as he pulled away, beaming like a complete idiot.

“I AM SO HAPPY, UNDYNE! I PROMISE I WILL BE THE VERY BEST FRIEND YOU COULD EVER IMAGINE! NOW! I MUST GO HOME TO PREPARE FOR OUR ULTRA-COOL FRIEND HANGOUT! I WILL SEE YOU LATER! AT OUR HANGOUT!”

And before she could even think of responding, he was running off toward Snowdin, waving all the while, leaving her standing there staring after him with her eyebrow still quirked and her mouth hanging open. Finally, as his form faded into the distance, she closed it, smirking as she put one hand on her hip and shook her head.

It wasn’t until long after he was gone that she realized they hadn’t actually decided when to meet up.

…

Ah, well. At least she knew where he lived.

* 

Papyrus was … not a bad person to hang out with, as it turned out.

He didn’t mind her being loud, for one. Mainly because he was just as loud, if not louder, than she was. They could scream at each other all day and neither of them would think the other was angry, or complain about their ears hurting—granted, Papyrus didn’t _have_ ears, but still. He was … nice. He was interesting and unintentionally funny and he was loud and he was comfortable and he was really, really nice.

A little _too_ nice, to be honest, but she could deal with that.

He also adored her, which was … somewhere between endearing and annoying.

Mainly because she still couldn’t figure out _why_ he adored her.

He was clearly enamored with the Royal Guard, so for a while, she thought it was that. But then again, he had seemed surprised when he heard she was _in_ the Royal Guard, and he had been interested in her before then.

Still. The Royal Guard thing was clearly a plus in his book. And given that he was apparently already a fan of the Royal Guard, she assumed that he must have figured out her rank fairly quickly. But then again, he had already proven that just because he _should_ know something, didn’t mean that he would.

“YOU’RE THE _HEAD_ OF THE ROYAL GUARD?! ”

Well. It was always nice to have a fan.

And that become her prevailing theory for a while, even though it still left her with more than a few questions. He had the sort of personality she could associate with fanboys, and she knew she had a lot of admirers all around the underground. She guessed that that was why he was so intent on hanging out with her. She still enjoyed it, sure, and he was a good friend. But she assumed the friend part of it was a far second to fan.

That assumption only solidified further when he said that he wanted to join the Royal Guard as well.

Or, more precisely, when he showed up at her house in the middle of the night, announcing that he was going to join the Royal Guard, and asking her to train him.

And it didn’t matter what she would have said at any other time. When she stood there, in her pajamas, staring at him on her doorstep, she really didn’t give a _damn_ what she would have said at any other time.

She slammed the door in his face.

She wasn’t mad. Per se. She was _pissed,_ but he had always been overenthusiastic and a little bit impulsive. So she wasn’t overly surprised, given how excited he had been about the Guard in the past.

She _was_ surprised to find him still standing on her doorstep the next morning.

He wasn’t even asleep. He was standing there, in exactly the same position he had been in when she slammed the door.

Beaming like a total idiot when she opened it again.

And again, it didn’t matter what she would have said in any other situation, if he had come at a more reasonable time and she had actually been ready to give an answer then.

Anyone who was willing to stand on her doorstep all night to join the Royal Guard had more than enough drive in her book.

So the next day, his training began.

She wasn’t sure what she was expecting. She didn’t know much about Papyrus aside from his tendency to talk a lot, and to talk loudly, and his apparent admiration of both her and the Royal Guard. She knew from the get-go that he would try his best. Anyone who was willing to camp out on her doorstep certainly wasn’t going to slack off.

But she found, very quickly, that he was not only determined: he was … good.

He was _really_ good.

He clearly hadn’t been trained before, but he had more than enough raw strength to make it into the Guard. His HP was one of the highest she had ever seen, and he had far more stamina than she would have expected from the brother of someone who was apparently so lazy. He could run twice as many laps as most of her first-time trainees, and not even look tired. Even with his lack of muscle, he could still lift several times his own weight, and his magic helped him lift even more.

And that wasn’t even saying anything about his attacks.

He was not only strong, but he was coordinated. Controlled. If she asked him to hit a target two feet from his face, he could do it just as easily as he could one a hundred feet in the distance. He didn’t even seem to have to work on it. She gave him her tips, of course, everything Asgore had taught her, but he hardly needed it. Within a couple of weeks he was already shooting the targets even more accurately than she was. And he didn’t even have to shoot off a flurry of bones to do it.

Undyne knew she was strong. She knew she was skilled. And she was proud of all of that. She had her own fighting style, her own strengths and weaknesses, and she wouldn’t have herself any other way.

But shooting off a flurry of attacks, from as many directions as possible, was the only way she had ever learned to hit a specific target. She knew she wasn’t precise. It just wasn’t the way she was. Asgore had known that, and he had worked with her to find the best way to fight using that characteristic. As far as she knew, she was the only monster who could send off so many high-impact attacks at one time without getting tired.

But Papyrus … Papyrus was precise. He could send a single bone flying to a tiny target and hit it right at the center, no matter the distance. She didn’t know whether his attacks would have been as strong in a flurry, because they didn’t need to be—that one bone was enough to do plenty of damage on its own. And he could keep sending them off, one after another, no matter how fast she trained him. He met every single challenge she threw his way.

And after three weeks, she finally decided he was ready to spar.

She didn’t tell him until the day of, because she had a feeling if she told him the day before, he would spend the entire night standing outside her door again, and while she didn’t sleep a lot, she still wanted to get a few hours in so she was in top shape to test him.

As expected, he started beaming and jittering the second the words came out of her mouth, and she found herself smiling even as she shook her head and led him to the spot she had picked out.

There were a few spots in Waterfall that she had reserved for sparring matches with her trainees: big, empty places, because after the first few instances of sparring in town, she really didn’t want to do any more community service to make up for the property damage. Especially when they both specialized in projectile attacks.

She placed them about thirty feet apart, and told Papyrus not to come any closer, or move around the room. He was better at battles with some distance than up-close ones, and if he would be keeping his distance in real fights, he needed to do the same with her.

“Okay!” she said, clapping her hands together and rubbing them. “We go until one of us reaches 20 HP, then we stop. And you better not wimp out on me before then!”

Papyrus stood up even straighter and raised his hand in a salute.

“I WON’T, CAPTAIN!”

It was funny, hearing him call her “Captain.” For some reason she couldn’t explain, for just a second, she wanted to tell him to just call her “Undyne.”

Then she remembered that everyone in the Guard called her “Captain,” and there was no reason for this guy, who she had known for less than two months, to be any different.

She took on a fighting stance, beaming at him as she formed a spear in her clenched fist.

“On three! One, two, _three_!”

And they were off.

It had been a while since Undyne had sparred with someone other than Asgore—someone who could last more than ten seconds against her, that is. She took it a little easy at first, just to make sure Papyrus knew what he was getting into, but every attack she sent out was quickly followed with one of his own, and within a minute she was so focused on the battle that she forgot to hold herself back.

And Papyrus kept up.

She sped up, sending a flurry of spears out at a time, and he matched her with ease. He still got hit, but he never fell down, never even flinched, he just kept on going, and the first time one of his bones got through her spears and whacked her in the gut, she paused for a second, stunned, before she straightened and kept on going.

In the back of her mind, she wondered if this was how Asgore had felt the first time she knocked him down.

As the minutes passed, she found herself forgetting that she was supposed to be testing him. Supposed to be training him. As the minutes passed, she felt more and more like she was sparring with Asgore again, both of them going full-out, both of them trying their absolute best, because the other could _stand_ their absolute best. Her soul thrummed, her grin widened, and she fought, harder and harder, until there were hundreds of spears embedded in the floor and the walls but she didn’t care, she could keep going, this was amazing, this was _exhilarating_ and—

Another bone hit her, and she had barely raised her arms to deflect a second when a third came rushing toward her, full-speed, aimed right at the center of her face.

She grit her teeth.

And the bone stopped.

It was less than an inch away from her face, and it _stopped._

“THERE!” she heard him call from across the battlefield, even as she stood there, staring at the concentrated magic right in front of her face before it dropped to the ground, harmless and forgotten. “WE SAID WE WOULD STOP AT 20 HP.”

Undyne’s eyes flicked to him, still standing on the other side of the makeshift battlefield, watching her with that same innocent expression. She hadn’t even noticed how low her HP had gotten. She rarely did, when she was in the middle of a good fight. And he had put up a _very_ good fight. Better than she had had in a while. He wasn’t as strong as Asgore, and she was still sure she would have beaten him if they had kept going, but … he was good. _Really_ good. And with more training, he could be excellent.

When she told him so, it was like she had just told him she would be personally escorting him to the surface. His smile was … contagious, and somehow never stopped being endearing no matter how many times she saw it. She told him exactly what he was good at, and what he needed to improve on, and they kept training, whenever she had a moment to spare—which was a lot, since most of her work was patrolling and delegating work to other Guards, and Asgore assured her that she should spend as much time training new recruits as she deemed necessary.

He kept getting better. And since he was already good, better meant he was _great._ He was faster and even more precise than before. He could go for longer fights without getting tired. He learned her patterns, learned how to get past her defenses and hit her more often. He learned how to deflect her attacks, to the point that their respective HP were falling at almost identical rates.

So it really didn’t surprise her when one day, three months into their training, hers was falling even faster than his.

It made sense. She had had a long day, and she knew she wasn’t in top form, and Papyrus had been just as pumped as ever. She still felt that twinge of pride every time he landed a hit, because _she_ had helped him do that, she had made him better, she had trained him to improve when he was already fantastic. Sure, it hurt to get hit, but it felt so much better to see him standing there, winning, even though he never let his guard down, never stopped, never got too cocky and stopped paying attention to what she was throwing back.

“SHOULD WE STOP?” Papyrus called out after about twenty minutes, when she barely deflected a bone coming her way.

She huffed and shook her head.

“No! Keep going!”

She could see Papyrus’s eyes gleaming in concern, but he did as she said.

She barely noticed her HP going down over the next ten minutes, lower and lower, even though she could feel her energy slipping with every bone that smacked into her. Her attacks didn’t slow down, though she knew they were getting weaker. In the back of her mind, the numbers slipped, lower and lower and lower still.

Another bone hit her, and Undyne summoned a shaky spear, ready to throw it across the space between them.

But Papyrus wasn’t moving.

And there were no more bones coming her way.

She waited a second, thinking maybe he had just fallen out of his “zone,” as he called it, but he just kept standing there, staring at her, that concern from earlier glowing on his face.

The spear vanished, and Undyne’s arm fell to her side.

“Why did you stop?!” she snapped, harsher than she intended. “I told you to keep going!”

Papyrus flinched. Just a tiny flinch, and a second later he was standing tall again, assured in his own decision. “BUT YOUR HP WAS LOW!”

Undyne grit her teeth. “So what?! That’s what’s _supposed_ to happen, this is a _fight_!”

“BUT I DIDN’T WANT TO HURT YOU!”

“That’s the point of a _fight_!”

Papyrus paused, opening and closing his mouth several times before he dropped his gaze to the ground.

“WELL … YES, BUT …”

“But nothing!” she cut him off, smacking a hand over the voice in her head telling her to let it go. “Hit me again!”

Papyrus’s head snapped back up. He blinked once, very obviously, then took a step forward.

“ONLY AFTER I HEAL YOU!”

Undyne groaned. “Papyrus, you’re not gonna be stopping to heal your enemies!”

Papyrus stopped, his browbone furrowed. “I’M NOT?”

“No!” she shot back, and she could feel her confusion beginning to overtake her anger. “Of course you’re not, why would you heal them?!”

“BECAUSE IF I DON’T HEAL THEM, THEIR HP MIGHT GET TOO LOW!”

“You _want_ their HP to get low, that’s why you’re attacking them!”

Papyrus fidgeted, a slight whine forcing its way past his teeth. “BUT I DON’T WANT IT TO GET TOO LOW!”

And finally, Undyne stopped.

She stopped, and she looked at him.

There were a lot of things she assumed about people when she met them, just because not assuming it, when it was so often true, would just take up more of her time. No one had given her a reason to think that those assumptions were unreasonable.

No one before now, at least.

But Papyrus had broken almost every expectation she had had of him so far. And when she thought about it, there was no reason he would stop doing that now.

She took a moment, breathed in very deep to calm herself, then looked at him again.

“Papyrus … if you find a human … what are you planning to do?”

Papyrus straightened up, tall and proud, his eyes shining and his smile wide. “EXACTLY WHAT I’M SUPPOSED TO DO!”

“Which is?” she asked, a shimmer of dread twisting in her gut.

“I WILL FIGHT IT VALIANTLY UNTIL IT SURRENDERS, AND THEN I WILL TAKE IT TO THE KING SO IT CAN OPEN THE BARRIER FOR HIM!”

Undyne stared. She just … stared. Her shoulders fell, just a little, as much as she tried to hide it.

“So the human can open the barrier for him?”

“OF COURSE!” Papyrus replied, as if _he_ were the one confused by her behavior. “THAT’S WHAT HE NEEDS A HUMAN FOR! BECAUSE HE NEEDS A STRONG SOUL!”

Undyne licked her lips and swallowed the lump in her throat. “And what do you think is gonna happen to the human after it breaks the barrier?”

Papyrus opened his mouth, then paused, closing it again and frowning in thought.

“WELL, I DON’T KNOW. MAYBE IT WILL GO BACK TO ITS LITTLE HUMAN, UH … PACK? IS THAT WHAT GROUPS OF HUMANS ARE CALLED?”

“I dunno, Papyrus,” Undyne replied, quieter than even she knew she could speak.

“HM.” Papyrus tilted his head, apparently deep in thought. “I WILL HAVE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS IF I AM TO FACE A HUMAN PROPERLY! I MUST UNDERSTAND ALL OF ITS LINGO!”

Undyne hummed and did her best to smile. It was a small smile, and she knew it wouldn’t convince him, but she did it anyway.

“Yeah. Good idea.”

Papyrus smiled back, almost as hesitantly as she did. She stared at him for a long few seconds, then suggested that they do a few more laps around Waterfall, just to make sure they were in good running shape. Papyrus was all too happy to comply.

She was pretty sure he knew what she was doing, but he didn’t complain, and when she spent the rest of the day doing exercises instead of sparring, he let it go.

She tried a few more times in the weeks after that, just on the principle of it, even though she already knew how it would turn out. Obviously he wouldn’t actually kill her in a fight. But she had trained Guards before, Guards who _would_ kill if it came down to it. And even in a fake sparring match, she knew that look in their eyes. She knew how to tell when they were willing to go all the way.

And Papyrus wasn’t going to kill anything.

She could push him as hard as she wanted. _Anyone_ could push him as hard as they wanted. They could make it clear that they weren’t going to stop, that they were going to fight until someone died.

He wouldn’t kill them.

He wouldn’t even kill a human.

Maybe he could capture them. After all, they were supposed to bring humans to Asgore, anyway, rather than kill them themselves—not that she would hesitate to stab one with a spear if it showed up. But if the human wouldn’t stop fighting, if the human wouldn’t give up unless he struck that final blow …

He wouldn’t kill the human, but she had no doubt that the human would kill him.

If she made him part of the Royal Guard, if she sent him into battle, and a human arrived, she would be condemning him to death.

She hadn’t known him for long, but … even if she had just met him. Even if she had no other attachment to him than the fact that he was her student, she couldn’t have done that. She couldn’t, in her right mind, send someone into battle knowing that they didn’t stand a chance.

But he had asked her to train him.

She could still remember the look in his eyes when he showed up on her doorstep, even though she had slammed the door on him right afterward. She can still see that look now, gleaming every time he accomplished something, and even when he didn’t. There was so much hope in his eyes. So much ambition. So much dedication. Maybe he wouldn’t kill, but he would train. He would learn. He would do everything she asked him to do, anything at all, to reach his goal. Except the one thing that needed to be done.

Why the hell did she have to find the perfect soldier only for him to be a total pacifist?

Why the hell did his one request have to be something she knew she could never grant?

She had to tell him. She had to break it to him now, that if he couldn’t kill, then he couldn’t be on the Guard. If he couldn’t defend himself, no matter what it took, then he couldn’t safely go into a real battle. She looked at him after yet another sparring match, standing across from her, still waiting so dutifully for his next order, she opened her mouth and—

Nothing.

Not a sound came out.

The words died in her throat, and no more came to replace them.

She had to tell him the truth.

But the truth would crush him. The truth would crush the dream he had latched onto more firmly than anyone she had ever trained.

And even if she would have broken it to any other trainee without batting an eye …

This wasn’t just any other trainee. This was Papyrus.

And even though she had no idea why that made such a difference, that didn’t change the fact that it did.

She pressed her lips together, took a deep breath, and held herself as tall as she could.

“You’re doing good so far, Papyrus,” she said, and to her credit, her voice didn’t break at all. “But not good enough! You still have a lot of training to do! So you better come back here every day and work your butt off until you’re ready!”

She had no idea where the last part came from, and for a split second, she regretted it.

But then Papyrus straightened up, his eyes gleaming with determination, his hands curling into fists at his sides.

“YES, MA’AM, CAPTAIN UNDYNE, SIR!”

And then he was back in his fighting pose, ready for her to fire attacks. After a long second, a hard shallow, and a deep breath, Undyne summoned a spear and launched herself into the fight.

One day. One day, she would tell him the truth.

But for now … for now she would let him believe he was working toward his dream.

And maybe, if she waited long enough, he would find a new one.

* 

“ARE YOU AND DR. ALPHYS FRIENDS?”

She was used to Papyrus making random comments that made no sense.

It was just one of the things he did. It had been annoying at first, a little, but now … now it was endearing. Like most of his qualities became after a little time passed. She wondered if he knew he had that skill. She decided not to ask.

“What?” she asked instead, looking over to where he stood behind her while she hunched in front of a small pond, splashing water onto her face. They had spent the day training and decided to take a walk afterward, making their way around the more secluded areas of Waterfall. Sometimes talking, about training, about Asgore or Sans or anyone else they knew. Sometimes just walking.

“YOU AND DR. ALPHYS,” he repeated, as casually as ever. “ARE YOU FRIENDS?”

And suddenly Undyne realized exactly _what_ Papyrus had asked her.

She turned her head away before he could catch the reddening of her cheeks. She stared at the water and cleared her throat.

“Uh, yeah, sure we are. We’re great friends.”

Good. That sounded casual. That sounded normal. He would buy that.

She waited. She could feel him staring at her, even though she didn’t look at him.

“HOW DID YOU MEET?”

Undyne opened her mouth, paused, and closed it again. She felt her eyes soften.

“In the dump,” she replied, and her voice came out much gentler than she had intended it. “She was standing there looking … thoughtful. Makes sense, with how smart she is. She’s _really_ smart. I mean, I never thought anyone could be that smart before I met her. She’s _amazing,_ and she’s funny and she knows all the best shows and she knows about all this science stuff and she’s really cu—”

She cut the word off and shoved it back down her throat before it could get out. She coughed.

“She’s great,” she finished.

She waited a couple of seconds before looking at Papyrus again. She wasn’t blushing anymore, she was sure of it. But Papyrus was still staring at her, a tiny furrow in the middle of his browbone, his head tilted to the side.

“DO YOU LIKE HER?”

Undyne choked and jerked back, almost falling into the pond.

“W-what?!” she forced out.

“DO YOU LIKE HER?” Papyrus asked again, as if he were asking the most ordinary question in the world.

Undyne opened her mouth, closed it, then opened and closed it again three more times.

“Uh, yeah, like … as a friend! I like her as a friend! ‘Course I like her, ‘cause she’s my friend!”

“OH,” Papyrus replied, completely calm, damn him. “THAT’S FUNNY. IT SEEMED LIKE YOU LIKED HER AS MORE THAN A FRIEND.”

Undyne had just started to push herself to her feet, and as the words hit her ears, she stumbled and dropped back into a crouch to keep from falling on her butt.

“Why would you think that?!”

Papyrus gave her a funny look, though he seemed more confused about why she was moving around so much than anything else. “WELL EVERY TIME YOU TALK ABOUT HER YOU GET THIS LOOK ON YOUR FACE THAT YOU DON’T GET EXCEPT WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT HER.”

Undyne floundered a few more times, then cleared her throat and jerked her head away.

“That’s … that’s cause she’s smart and I think about the smart stuff she says and it confuses me so I look confused!”

Papyrus tilted his head the other way.

“YOU DON’T LOOK CONFUSED. YOU LOOK VERY BLUSHY AND SMILEY AND LIKE YOUR HEAD IS SOMEWHERE FAR AWAY.”

Undyne sputtered, but forced herself to sit up a little straighter, since apparently she couldn’t stand without falling over. “That’s what confused looks like!”

“IS IT?” Papyrus asked, his browbone shooting up. “WOWIE! I DIDN’T KNOW THAT! I’VE BEEN DOING THE CONFUSED FACE WRONG THIS WHOLE TIME!”

Undyne blinked. She felt … a little bad for lying to him, but … well. It wasn’t _that_ big of a lie. She looked away and cleared her throat.

“Y-yeah, you have … you better fix that.”

“YES, DEFINITELY!” Papyrus replied, and when she looked back to him, he was already forming his face into what she guessed was his best impression of how she looked when she thought about Alphys.

Holy shit. Did she really look like that when she thought about Alphys?

She … would need to work on that. Eventually she was going to make that face in front of Alphys, and …

She cleared her throat again.

“So what did you want to do? We’ve been walking around for a while.”

Papyrus put on his best thinking face, and Undyne let her attention drift to how adorable he looked with that face on. After a good ten seconds, he straightened up again, his sockets bright and his smile wide.

“OH! I KNOW! WE COULD GO VISIT THE DUMP!”

Undyne blinked, then shrugged. “Sure. There’s always some cool junk there. Let’s go!”

“AND WE CAN INVITE DR. ALPHYS, TOO!”

As her smile fell and her cheeks flushed once again, Undyne swore she saw a hint of mischief gleaming in Papyrus’s eyes.

But she was probably just imagining it.

* 

Even more than a year after he first asked, after she first saw him fight, after she first realized that he had the strength, the power, the abilities, but not the will to be a fighter, Papyrus still hadn’t given up on joining the Royal Guard.

She had thought about telling him at least ten times. But he had looked so determined, so desperate, and she had looked into those eyes and she … couldn’t. She couldn’t crush his dream. She couldn’t tell him that he just wasn’t cut out for it.

She wasn’t sure if he would understand why, anyway.

Maybe he would insist that he _could_ kill a human, if he needed to. Maybe he would insist that he could learn. That he just needed more training, he could do this, he knew he could do this.

And while she might have agreed to a request like that from anyone else … she knew she wouldn’t be able to do it if he asked.

Because it was part of who he was. It was part of what made him … _him._

And she couldn’t take that away.

She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she did.

And she wasn’t even sure she could do it if she tried.

So she distracted him. It wasn’t that hard. He had a fairly short attention span—at least before something really caught his interest—and he trusted her. He trusted her more than she deserved to be trusted, frankly. He trusted her when she said that he needed to be faster, to run more laps without getting tired, even though he could now run three times as much as anyone else in the Guard. He trusted her when she said he needed more precision, more strength, even though he was one of the only people she knew who could hold up in a battle with her on an almost equal level.

He trusted her, and sometimes, she hated herself for it.

But she did it anyway.

Even after a year, she still couldn’t decide whether it was kinder to keep lying to him, even though she knew that she couldn’t keep it up forever.

It was easier than she had thought it would be, though. It was easier than it would be with someone who she was just training, someone who was only ever with her to learn how to be in the Royal Guard. Sure, that had been most of what they did at first. But then Papyrus started asking if she wanted to go to the Capital together, or visit his house, and other times they would be training but then they would start talking and before they knew it they had spent two hours straight just chatting away. Other times they would spar but it would somehow turn into them running around the room, chasing each other, wrestling on the ground and having tickle flights and her noogying his skull until he all but shrieked for mercy.

It was weird. It wasn’t what she expected. But it was … nice.

She had never had anything like this before, not that she could remember. But at the same time, it felt like she had been goofing off with Papyrus for as long as she could remember.

But it hadn’t been that long. She had only known him for a year.

Or … had it been two?

Well, one or two. Something like that. Definitely not forever. She had known Alphys longer than she had known Papyrus. She was … almost sure of that.

The question lingered in her head for a long time before she finally shook it off.

It didn’t matter. However long they had known each other, it didn’t make a difference now.

It was on one of the days when sparring turned into chasing that they found themselves in one of the unused rooms in Waterfall. She didn’t recognize it—there were a lot of rooms like this, and not much to tell them apart—but it was a good enough spot for them both to flop down, panting for breath, Undyne giggling and muttering as to how she definitely would have caught him, if they had kept going a little longer.

She got up after a minute, her energy renewed, but Papyrus, to her surprise, stayed down. He laid back on the floor, his arms and legs spread out in all directions. She frowned at him, but he didn’t even glance at her.

She had just opened her mouth to ask him if he was okay when he opened his own instead.

“DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN WE USED TO TAKE NAPS HERE?”

Undyne blinked. She looked down at him, lying on the ground, staring up at the ceiling with a funny, distant look in his eyes.

“What?”

“THIS ROOM,” he replied, as if he was making complete sense. “DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN WE USED TO LAY DOWN HERE AND TAKE NAPS. OR YOU WOULD LIE DOWN HERE AND TAKE NAPS AND I WOULD LIE THERE AND KEEP TALKING AND YOU GOT MAD AT FIRST BECAUSE I WOULDN’T LET YOU SLEEP BUT THEN WE KEPT TALKING AND YOU SAID IT WAS MORE FUN THAN SLEEPING ANYWAY.”

Undyne shivered.

Papyrus babbled nonsense sometimes. He babbled a _lot_ of nonsense sometimes. She was used to it. It was … endearing, in a funny way. It didn’t make sense, but it didn’t need to. It was familiar and comfortable and she loved it about him.

But this …

He talked about it like he would talk about any memory. Any _real_ memory, one that either she hadn’t been there to confirm or could remember just as well herself.

But … this wasn’t a real memory. This was nonsense. And while Papyrus sometimes seemed to get nonsense mixed up with real life, it had never been like this, he was lying there staring at the ceiling with this wistful, nostalgic look on his face like it seemed entirely real to him and it scared the hell out of her.

She swallowed and forced that fear to the back of her head.

“Papyrus … we’ve never been here before,” she said, carefully, because even though she was scared, she didn’t want to risk scaring him. “Not together, anyway.”

Papyrus frowned. He turned to look at her, staring up at her with those wide, baffled eyes that she loved more than she would be willing to admit out loud.

“WE HAVEN’T?”

“No,” Undyne said, very carefully, trying not to sound half as afraid as she actually was.

Papyrus tilted his head and furrowed his brow.

“OH,” he replied, very simply and plainly, as if it wasn’t a big deal at all. He looked back up at the ceiling. “WELL, MAYBE IT WAS A DREAM! MAYBE IF I GO TO SLEEP NOW THEN I’LL DREAM IT AGAIN AND I’LL KNOW FOR SURE WHETHER IT WAS A DREAM!”

He grinned and nodded to himself, then shut his eyes with as much hard-headed persistence as he had during every one of their training sessions.

Undyne stood there, watching him, and even after a minute passed, he didn’t open his eyes. He clearly wasn’t asleep. She wasn’t sure if she had _ever_ seen him sleep, no matter how tired he was. But still he lay there, eyes firmly shut, as if he really could bring the dream back by willpower alone.

She didn’t understand him sometimes. No, scratch that, she hardly ever understood him. Sometimes it seemed like he understood nothing about the world, and other times, it seemed like he understood more than anyone she had ever met. He wanted to be in the Royal Guard, but he didn’t want to hurt anyone. She knew she had only met him before one—two?—years ago, and yet it felt like she had known him for far, far longer.

He didn’t make sense. He hadn’t made sense when she met him, and he didn’t make sense now.

But she still liked him. He was more fun than anyone else she had met in her entire life. He was the friend she had wanted so desperately growing up, even if she never knew it. She liked him a lot, and she didn’t care how weird he got. He was her friend.

And friends like him didn’t come by every day.

So she might as well focus on how lucky she was to have him.

He stiffened and opened one socket when she flopped down beside him, but quickly closed both when he realized she was looking.

She bit back a chuckle, shook her head, then closed her own eyes, letting her head flop down onto the wet ground beneath her.

After all, they worked pretty well together. And maybe if they both tried as hard as they could, they could find Papyrus’s dream.

And even if they didn’t, well, they would still have spent a nice afternoon together. And that was good enough for her.


	5. Undyne and Papyrus (Part II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so this story comes to an end! Though this is far from the end of Papyrus and Undyne's story, I can assure you. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who read, commented, bookmarked, and left kudos! Next week: Sans and Toriel's story, _Dishes_.

Once, one of the trainees made the mistake of saying that she spent an awful lot more time with Papyrus than she did with anyone else trying to get into the Guard.

He didn’t even sound accusing. Not really. Just curious.

She didn’t care.

She almost assigned him to a week of standing around at the dump, but then she realized that Alphys loved the dump, and she didn’t want to risk the chance that this guy enjoyed it, too. So she assigned him to litter duty instead. Fifty pieces picked up in the day, minimum.

Littering was extremely rare in the underground, and he would be lucky to find ten. But she left that fact out and sent him on his way.

None of the other trainees ever brought up Papyrus again.

Maybe she did spend a lot of time with him. So what? They were training. Or … well, they were training a lot of the time. They always got a lot of exercise in, regardless of what they were doing, and that counted. He never seemed to run out of energy, and sometimes she wondered if she would ever be able to wear him out without wearing herself out in the process. But still. You could always improve.

Sometimes, though … sometimes they didn’t even get the exercise in. Sometimes—though rarely—they didn’t chase each other or do laps or even splash around in the pond. Sometimes, they just walked. They talked, or they let the silence settle around them, as it so rarely did.

It was in the silence that Undyne finally allowed herself to think.

To notice Papyrus’s steps next to her. The faint sound of his breath, even though she knew he didn’t need to breathe. The little tunes he would hum under his breath when the silence went on for a little too long.

It always felt familiar. Familiar like someone she had known for her entire life, rather than just a couple of years.

It sounded like … he belonged there. By her side.

And sometimes she found herself wondering how she had gone more than twenty years without him.

He had always followed her around like it was the most natural thing in the world, and he kept doing so now, trailing at her side as she led him through the halls of Waterfall, further away from the bustling of other people. They had been running at first, but they had slowed down a few minutes ago, wandering along as slowly as she ever moved, Papyrus appreciating their surroundings while Undyne watched him with a tiny smile.

She turned a few corners that were so familiar now she could have walked them blindfolded, and Papyrus followed, loyal and eager as ever, until she stepped inside a doorway and stopped a few feet inside the room.

It wasn’t that different from any other room in Waterfall. It was small, with a few plants growing in the corners, a few shiny rocks on the walls. The only thing that really set it apart was the piano that had been set up in the corner: small, unassuming, and a little dusty. Maybe it wasn’t much to anyone else, but it made her smile a little more softly as memories of music flowed into her head.

She turned back to Papyrus just as his eyes lit up, and she felt her chest warm at his wide, eager grin.

“WOWIE! WHAT’S THIS ROOM?”

Undyne shrugged, stuffing her hands in her pockets as she wandered further in. “Just somewhere I like to hang out. I’ve really never taken you here before?”

Papyrus opened his mouth to answer, then paused. He stood there for a second, his jaw hanging open, before he finally clamped it shut and frowned.

“I … I DON’T KNOW.”

Undyne furrowed her brow. It was getting a little concerning, how much he “didn’t know.” Things that he thought might be true but weren’t, things that he definitely should have known but just … couldn’t remember. He was a little young for memory problems, and she didn’t even know if skeletons _got_ memory problems when they got old. It wasn’t like she had met any other than Papyrus and Sans.

But Papyrus was giving her a worried look now, so Undyne shoved her concern to the back of her head and waved him off.

“Eh. Doesn’t matter.”

The concern melted away, like it had never been there, and Undyne couldn’t decide whether she was more flattered or worried that her opinion mattered quite that much to him.

She cleared her throat and turned back to the room, hands on her hips.

“So anyway, yeah, I came here a lot when I was a kid. It’s nice and private, away from everything. Didn’t have to worry about being too loud, especially when she I was playing piano. I could bash out as many songs as I wanted and no one ever complained.”

She smirked and gave the piano an affectionate pat as she passed it. She was already walking away, but she couldn’t miss the way Papyrus’s eyes all but gleamed from beside her.

“OH! YOU PLAY PIANO?”

Undyne turn to look at the piano, then back to Papyrus, shrugging. “Yeah, sure. Since I was a squirt.”

She knew it wasn’t actually possible for empty sockets to brighten, but Papyrus sure as hell made that hard to believe sometimes.

“CAN YOU PLAY SOMETHING FOR ME?” he asked, all but beaming.

Undyne raised an eyebrow, but shrugged again.

“Uh, I guess. I don’t really play around other people very often, but … okay.” She sat down on the bench, settling her hands on the keys, her fingers right around middle C, before she looked back to him. “Any requests?”

Papyrus frowned and looked at the floor. His browbone furrowed, and his head tilted to the side, his teeth pressed together in apparently deep thought.

“You think of one?” she asked, trying not to snicker at his pure concentration.

He hummed noncommittally.

“I THOUGHT I DID BUT IT’S … NOT THERE ANYMORE,” he said, sounding confused by his own words. Then he met her eyes again and smiled. “JUST PLAY ONE THAT YOU LIKE!”

“Okay,” Undyne said, turning back to the keyboard. She thought for a moment, then grinned. “Gerson taught me this one. It’s this really old human song. Well, not old for Gerson, but old for humans. Older than me, anyway. It’s by this Beethoven guy.”

She could see Papyrus settle down on the floor in the corner of her eye. She paused, running over all the notes in her head, before she finally began to play.

It was amazing, how much she remembered even after a year without practicing it. It had been one of her favorites when Gerson first taught it to her. Until then, she had been learning by sheet music found in the dump and a few songs by ear, and this was the first time someone had actually taken the time to _teach_ her music. She smiled even as her fingers flew across the keys, muscle memory taking over as the other memories, the ones of Gerson’s wrinkly old grin and gentle instruction, filled her head. He had taught her a few songs after that, at her own insistence, but it had been years since she last asked for a lesson. Maybe it was time for that to change. Sure, she was busy as Captain, but she could always make a little time for her favorite old man.

Finally, the song tapered off, and she let the last notes linger before she lifted her fingers and opened her eyes, the smile still on her lips. For a moment, she sat there, just basking in the familiar feeling of the music, before she remembered that she had an audience.

An audience that was … sniffling?

Undyne turned, only to find Papyrus sitting on the same spot where she had left him, the bones of his face wrinkled as he tried and failed to choke back tears.

She shot up out of her seat.

“Papyrus?” she asked, loudly, but far more gently than she usually spoke. “Papyrus, what’s wrong? What happened?”

As she neared him, Papyrus shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut and frantically wiping them dry.

“I … I DON’T … I’M FINE! I’M FINE. THE SONG IS … THE SONG WAS VERY PRETTY, THAT’S ALL!”

“Are you crying?” she asked, even though he definitely was.

“NO I’M NOT!” he whined, dropping his arm back to his side. His face was somehow even more of a mess than before. “I GOT TEARS IN MY EYE!”

Undyne bit her lip. She thought about hugging him, but though Papyrus was usually more than happy to get a hug, she got the odd feeling that he might protest it now. So she just lingered a couple feet away, watching him with concern.

“Hey, uh … I won’t play anything else if it makes you upset—”

“NO!” he cut her off, so desperate it made her flinch. He froze, staring at her, then cleared his throat and looked away again. “NO, I … I WANT YOU TO PLAY MORE. I WANT TO HEAR YOU PLAY. PLEASE.”

Undyne stood there, just staring at him, for a long ten seconds. She wanted to ask what was wrong. She _should_ have asked what was wrong, this was … this was beyond just someone being affected by music, sure, some people cried at songs, some people were saps, but … it was different than this. She thought maybe Papyrus had heard this song before, maybe had a sad memory attached to it or something. But that didn’t feel right either.

She knew she should say something, but she couldn’t. She just stood there like an idiot, her mouth hanging open, her words failing her. Then Papyrus lifted his head again and looked at her, and her mouth clamped shut.

Maybe she did need to say something, to ask what was wrong. But not now.

Right now … right now she just had to do something to ease the ache shining in his eyes.

And if Papyrus wanted music, music he would get.

She paused to rub his shoulder before she walked back across the room, sat down at the piano, and rested her hands on the keys. She glanced at him, just once, and found his attention rapt on her once again. She swallowed hard, wracked her brain for another song, and almost before the title fully solidified into her head, she began to play. That song ended, and she played another. And another. And another after that.

She played every song she could think of, and the whole time she could feel Papyrus’s eyes locked on her, filled with tears, but never once letting them fall.

And when she finally rang out of things to play and found herself sitting there, staring down at the piano, listening to the silence ring out around them, broken only by two shuddering breaths, she had to squeeze her eyes shut to keep her own tears from falling, too.

* 

“I’m just trying to figure it out. _Why_ won’t you play?”

“BECAUSE I DON’T PLAY PIANO.”

“Well neither did I before I started! You’ve gotta start somewhere!”

“BUT I DON’T PLAY PIANO!”

“What, do you play another instrument or something?”

“YES!”

“Really? What?”

“UM … I … I DON’T … I’M NOT SURE. I … MAYBE I DON’T PLAY ONE. OR I FORGOT.”

“You forgot what instrument you play?”

“YES?”

“Uh … okay.”

There was probably a point where Undyne would have pushed it, where she would have given him a confused look and he would have looked uncomfortable and nothing would have been solved. But now, Undyne just shrugged and asked him how much Sans had been slacking off at his station lately.

If she thought about it, though, the idea of Papyrus playing piano _did_ feel weird. She didn’t know why. But she got the impression that it wouldn’t suit him, even though she didn’t know what _would._

A string instrument came to mind, but she brushed that thought away before it could settle. Papyrus had never taken his gloves off once since he had met her, and he claimed he had been wearing them as long as he could remember. How could he play a string instrument if he never took off his gloves?

The thought kept poking at her, but she just kept shoving it away.

There were a lot of little things like that that came to mind when she thought about him, when she spent her days with him. Little things that weren’t quite memories, things that _couldn’t_ be memories because she knew they had never happened, that she had never had a chance to learn them, but she felt like she knew them nonetheless. Quirks of his that she was sure she had never experienced firsthand. References to things they had never done, but which felt familiar nonetheless. It felt like she knew things, things she shouldn’t know, things she _couldn’t_ know.

It felt like she knew _him_.

Of course, she _did_ know him. She had known him for years. But looking at him now … it was like looking at someone she had known for much, much longer. Someone she had known for a good chunk of her life. Someone she had grown up with, even though she knew she hadn’t grown up with him, that was ridiculous, she remembered when they met, they had—

How had they met again?

She remembered the first time she had seen him with his brother in Waterfall, but … had that been the first time? He had been following her around, admiring her, but … when did he first see her? When had he started admiring her? She had never figured that out, had she? In her memory, he had always admired her, first from a distance, and then up close. And when he talked to her, even though he was nervous, he still acted like they had talked a hundred times before.

Had they?

She couldn’t …

The more she tried to remember it, the fuzzier it got. Like she was trying to remember a dream. He acted like he had known her and sometimes she thought about it and she swore she had known him before that. For _years_ before that, it felt like she had known him for a good chunk of her life, but she _hadn’t,_ she would have remembered if she had but at the same time she couldn’t totally dismiss it and sometimes he talked about things they had done together and she didn’t remember but they still felt familiar and … and …

The thought had been rolling around in her head for more than a week before she finally brought it up. She hadn’t really _planned_ to bring it up, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it and it was driving her insane and he had already pointed out three times that she seemed out of it during sparring sessions. So finally, on a quiet day, after they had finished their exercise sessions and found themselves sitting in the room he had once mentioned them taking naps in—and they _had_ taken plenty of naps in now—she felt her mouth open almost without conscious thought.

“Papyrus.”

“YES, UNDYNE?” he asked from his spot beside her, as innocently as he asked everything.

Undyne pressed her lips into a tight line, running everything through her head to make absolutely sure she wasn’t missing something.

“How did we meet?”

Papyrus opened his mouth and started to speak, but before he could get a single syllable past his teeth, he paused. His mouth closed, and he spent a moment thinking, his browbone furrowing as he tilted his head to the side.

“I … DON’T KNOW.”

“You don’t know?” she asked, far more incredulous than she should have been. “How can you _not know_?”

She winced at the vaguely angry tone of her voice, but if Papyrus had noticed it, he gave no sign. He just hummed.

“THERE ARE A LOT OF THINGS I DON’T KNOW. EVEN I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, AM NOT OMNISCIENT.”

Undyne groaned under her breath, gritting her teeth and shaking her head. “But … how can neither of us remember?!”

Papyrus hummed again. “THERE ARE A LOT OF THINGS I DON’T REMEMBER.”

Undyne paused. He said it so casually, like it should have been obvious, but …

“Like what?”

He went silent again. He stared up at the ceiling, his face unreadable, as if he were somewhere far, far away. He got like that sometimes. Looked like he wasn’t here anymore. Looked like he was someplace further than she knew the underground would ever allow them to go.

She had never asked him about his childhood. Where he had been born. He talked about living with his brother in Snowdin like they had been there forever.

But the Snowdin Guards claimed that they had just showed up there a few years ago. Showed up there, built a house, and settled in.

They never told anyone where they had lived before, and apparently, no one had ever asked.

Maybe …

“HAVE YOU RECONSIDERED MY ENTRY INTO THE ROYAL GUARD?”

It took Undyne a few seconds to process what he had said, but once the words clicked, it took all she had not to let out a long, heavy sigh.

“I told you, Papyrus, you … you still need more training,” she said, using her best Captain of the Royal Guard voice, official, professional, as if this really were an official and professional statement and not the most unprofessional decision she had ever made. She turned to him and smiled. “You’re doing great, though.”

“I AM?” he asked, his eyes lighting up.

Undyne’s face softened, and she smiled wider.

“Course you are. You’re the _Great Papyrus,_ aren’t you?” she replied, giving him a light punch in the shoulder that still made him wince. “You always do great.”

His whole face sparkled, and not for the first time, she thought it was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen.

Maybe not as beautiful as Alphys. Or … well, not the same kind of beautiful. But still beautiful, nonetheless.

“YOU’RE VERY GREAT, TOO,” he said at last, and she swore she could see his soul shining through the empty sockets of his eyes. “PERHAPS YOU AREN’T THE GREAT PAPYRUS, BUT YOU ARE THE GREAT UNDYNE. AND A GREAT CAPTAIN.”

Undyne turned her head before he could see the blush lighting up her cheeks, but she didn’t try to hide the smile spreading wide across her face.

They went quiet again after that, and as the silence settled, Undyne felt her smile fade. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, taking him in, every little quirk, everything that made him _Papyrus._ Everything that must have been unfamiliar once, even though she now felt like she couldn’t imagine him any different.

He was never going to fight.

Not for real, anyway.

It didn’t matter what she did, how hard she tried to convince him that it was the best choice. That sometimes, it was the _only_ choice. He would engage people in combat, sure. And he could beat them. He had almost beaten her on several occasions.

But he wouldn’t have killed her, even if it had been a serious, life or death situation.

He wouldn’t have killed anyone.

It wasn’t like she hoped he would be put in a position that he would _have_ to kill anyone. _She_ had never been put in a position like that. But she knew the chances were decent. If another human fell while she was still alive, and they made it past the Guards in Snowdin … she would have to kill it. She knew that. She took pride in that. Humans were vicious, ruthless, and killing one would mean setting everyone free.

She didn’t think she would enjoy killing the human. But it was what had to be done. It was her duty. It was the responsibility she had taken on when she joined the Royal Guard.

When she realized that being a Guard was more than just about being able to fight. It was about making choices.

Choices that might not always be as easy as they had been when she was a kid.

But Papyrus … he wasn’t like her. He was dedicated, he was passionate, just as much as she had been, if not more. But he wasn’t willing to go as far as she was. He would train all day and all night, he would work himself until he collapsed, he would do any job she gave him, but she knew now, beyond the tiniest doubt, that he would never kill. And she could never change that.

She wasn’t even sure she wanted to.

That was fine. If he didn’t want to kill, he shouldn’t have to. That was a job she had willingly taken on, knowing what she was getting herself into, and she hadn’t thought for a second that it was a job for everyone.

But if Papyrus became a Royal Guard …

It might not be something he could just choose not to do.

Not without facing consequences.

It wasn’t like they could pick which one of them would face a human that fell. It wasn’t like the human would march right up to a sentry station and demand to see the strongest Royal Guard—well, they might, but she doubted it. It wasn’t like Papyrus could just say, “OH, I’M SORRY, HUMAN, BUT I’VE TAKEN A VOW NOT TO KILL, COULD YOU PLEASE REFRAIN FROM ATTACKING ME WHILE I GO FETCH MY FRIEND UNDYNE?” And if he tried to capture it—because he _would_ try to capture it, even if he wouldn’t kill it—there was no way it was going to go down without a fight.

Humans were ruthless. Humans were vicious.

A human would kill him.

And he wouldn’t even try to kill them in return.

It didn’t matter how strong she made him. She could make him the strongest monster in the underground, but even the strongest monster only had limited HP. If he refused to strike the killing blow, unless he became some sort of master dodger … he would eventually die. Humans, from all she had ever heard, didn’t give up. And it wouldn’t care if he didn’t want to fight it.

He would die.

He would die because she let him become a Guard in the first place.

She turned her head to face him, just slowly enough so he wouldn’t notice.

He was still staring at the ceiling, at the glowing rocks she had been told looked like stars. Gerson said they looked like stars, at least. It wasn’t like any of them really knew what stars looked like.

That had sounded so infuriating before. It had just been one more thing that the humans had stolen from them, one more thing that they would never get to experience because those damn humans had _trapped_ them down here.

And it _was_ infuriating. Even if she hadn’t been there, even if she might never know all they had lost, she knew the humans had taken everything from them. She knew the humans had killed _thousands_ of monsters, while not a single one of them had been struck down. The humans deserved whatever they got, just like monsters deserved to get out of this hellhole and live on the surface like they should have centuries ago.

Papyrus was strong. He would make a great ally in ending this war once in for all, whether it was when the last human fell or after Asgore broke the barrier and was getting rid of the humans on the outside.

But he wouldn’t kill anyone.

And if he wouldn’t kill, he would be killed himself.

Her brow furrowed as she stared at him, his eyes so wide and wondrous, even though he had seen this room, this ceiling, several dozen times at least. He was so wise, in some ways. Wiser than she was. Wise, yet innocent.

She had met innocent trainees before, people who just needed a hard dose of reality before they were ready to serve in the Guard. But Papyrus … Papyrus wasn’t like them. He was innocent in a way that wouldn’t be changed, that didn’t _need_ to be changed. He saw the world, and he chose to pushing aside the worst parts of it and only see the better.

It was a trait she didn’t think she had ever seen before, not quite like this. And if she lost it … if _he_ lost it …

If he lost his _life_ because of his ideals …

She didn’t care what the stakes were. She didn’t care whether it would mean losing an ally, losing fighting power they very well might need.

She wasn’t going to put Papyrus on the front lines.

She wasn’t going to risk her best friend.

But … he wanted to be in the Guard.

He had been begging her, for _years_ now, to let him into the Guard. He had been training with her whenever she asked, completing every exercise she gave him, living up to every expectation except for one, which she now recognized he never would, and she never wanted him to. He had worked harder than anyone she had trained before in her life, and she was running out of reasons to tell him that he had to work harder still. She was going to run him dead at this rate, or finally let him believe that he would never be good enough, if he wasn’t thinking it already.

The idea came to her slowly, trickling in like water as she lay there, staring up the ceiling. She didn’t know where it had come from, but it felt … right, like so many things felt right with Papyrus, from the moment it hit her. She let it sit for a few minutes, rolling it around in her head, before she finally furrowed her brow and looked at him again.

“Hey, Papyrus … you ever thought about learning to cook?”

Papyrus turned his head to face her, his browbone furrowed again.

“COOK?”

“Yeah, like … cooking food?” she asked.

Papyrus perked up a little.

“I’VE COOKED MANY TIMES, YES! I AM QUITE SKILLED AT IT!” he said, with that sort of shallow confidence she wasn’t sure she completely believed. “BUT I HAVE NEVER TRIED TO LEARN HOW. I JUST DID IT.”

And apparently failed, if what she had heard from Sans was any indication. Sans would never speak a word against his brother, not directly, but she had learned to pick up on his subtle implications, and she got the feeling that Papyrus’s “attempts” at cooking hadn’t turned out nearly as well as he seemed to believe. Which was probably why they ate so many frozen dinners.

She went silent for a moment, thinking. Then she looked toward him again.

“Do you want to?”

“LEARN HOW TO COOK?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Sure.”

Papyrus blinked. Then he beamed.

“OF COURSE! THAT WOULD BE WONDERFUL! I COULD LEARN TO MAKE ALL SORTS OF DELICIOUS DISHES! I WOULD BE EVEN MORE AMAZING THAN I ALREADY AM!”

Undyne found herself smiling almost without realizing it. It was hard not to smile when she saw his eyes shining like that, his smile genuine, _really_ genuine, bright and happy and everything she wished he could be all the time.

“Then let’s do it,” she said, before she could even think.

Papyrus paused. “WHAT?”

“I’ll teach you,” she went on, and it had been a whim, a vague thought, but now she had latched onto it, now the ideas were buzzing around in her head and she knew there was no way she was going to let them go. “I can cook, so I’ll teach you how to do it better.”

Papyrus blinked, a long, slow blink.

“BUT … WHAT ABOUT MY TRAINING?”

“This _is_ training,” Undyne said, before she even had time to think. The idea buried itself so deep into her head that she could hardly remember what it had felt like before. “A Royal Guard has to be well-rounded! You can’t just learn how to fight and ignore everything else. What if some criminal bursts into your house in the middle of the night and raids your fridge? You gotta make sure that what they find is so delicious that they don’t notice you sneaking up behind them until you whack ‘em over the head!”

Papyrus stared at her for a few seconds, his eyes wider than she had seen in a while, and for a second, she realized exactly how silly she sounded. Then she brushed that thought aside and stared back at him, her face set and determined, and bit by bit, she watched those wide eyes light up, as if he were coming to a realization he should have come to a long time ago.

“YOU’RE RIGHT, UNDYNE!” he burst, shooting up into a sitting position so fast that he almost knocked himself over. “HOW COULD I HAVE NEGLECTED THIS ESSENTIAL ASPECT OF MY TRAINING? WE MUST BEGIN IMMEDIATELY!”

Undyne sat up next to him, almost as fast, and felt her own mouth stretching into a wide grin. “Yeah!”

They leapt to their feet in such perfect tandem it made Undyne’s chest warm. They beamed at each other before Papyrus pumped one of his fists into the air.

“TO YOUR HOUSE! OR MY HOUSE! TO SOME PLACE THAT HAS A KITCHEN!”

“My house has a kitchen!”

“SO DOES MINE!”

“My house is closer!”

“LET’S GO THERE, THEN!”

“Yeah!”

“YEAH!”

They were running before the sound even finished echoing around the room. They kept running, sprinting at their top pace through Waterfall, all the way to her house. They didn’t go to her house very often, if only because it was easier to train in other areas, but Papyrus knew the way. He had always known the way, from what she could remember. She couldn’t remember the first time he had come there, but she also didn’t remember ever teaching him where to go. He just knew.

At this point, she didn’t even question it.

They kept running even once they stumbled into her house, bumping into walls as they scrambled into the kitchen. She finally stopped in front of the counter, her hands still in the air, ready to reach for something.

“What should we make?”

She expected some thought, maybe some discussion or debate, but Papyrus just turned to her, beamed, and opened his mouth.

“SPAGHETTI!”

He said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. As if she should already know it. As if they had cooked it a thousand times before, even though she was sure that they had never cooked together in their lives.

“Why spaghetti?” she asked.

“WHY NOT SPAGHETTI?”

Undyne blinked. Then she shrugged.

“Eh. Good point. Alright! _Spaghetti_!”

And so they were off.

She didn’t think as she moved, snatching ingredients out of her cupboard and throwing them onto the stove while Papyrus raided her cabinets to find the pots and pans. She had made spaghetti a few times before. Probably. A long time ago. Had she? She felt like she had. Ah, well, it couldn’t be that hard.

She slammed the spaghetti into the pot and Papyrus cranked up the heat, and when she yelled for him to crank it up higher, he did, without even asking questions.

Something in the back of her head told her that she didn’t need to crank the heat up quite that high, and that maybe she should add water as well. It sounded like Asgore. But that voice was a hell of a lot quieter than the voice telling her that Papyrus hadn’t looked happier in weeks, and the more orders she barked, the more energy and enthusiasm she pumped into her words, the happier he looked.

So she kept going.

“Crank it up! Hotter! _Hotter!_ _Make the food feel all your fiery passion_!”

_“ THE FOOD IS FEELING MY PASSION, UNDYNE!”_

“It _better_! Now throw in the ingredients! All of them!”

“EVEN THE CHOCOLATE SAUCE?”

_“All of them!”_

“HOW HARD DO I STIR?”

_“Hard enough to make them fear you!”_

And he was sweating and gritting his teeth but she could see his smile and his eyes lighting up and so she yelled louder, faster, and they ran around the kitchen, throwing things into the pot, cranking up the heat until the flames almost burned them when they tried to touch the pan, and then they did it all over again.

By the time they were finished, there was spaghetti sauce all over the walls, the kitchen had been scorched, and all the food they had taken out had become a pile of ashes sitting in the middle of a pot. And she and Papyrus stood in the middle of it, covered in sauce and ash and grinning and laughing and pumping their fists into the air.

It was, without a doubt, the best cooking session she had ever had.

And when she asked Papyrus if he wanted to come for another lesson next week, his smile was worth every pot of ruined spaghetti she would ever be able to make.

*

There weren’t a lot of quiet moments with Papyrus.

Not that she minded. She could appreciate quiet, in short spurts, but she preferred thrills, liveliness, enthusiasm and shouting and running around, the rush of magic flowing through her body, pulling the grin wide on her face.

But … quiet was still nice. Occasionally.

And occasionally, even with Papyrus, she got it.

They trained all day, from the moment they woke up to past the time where most people had dinner, stopping only for quick snacks grabbed out of her fridge before they returned to her yard to continue their practice battles. Well, they had _started_ as practice battles. But at some point they started laughing and running around and it was closer to a game of tag and wrestling than training, but frankly, she didn’t give a damn.

They ran and laughed like ridiculous little kids until one of them—she couldn’t even remember who—tripped and fell on the ground, and the other fell a second later and then they were both on the ground, laughing even harder, and Undyne reached over to pulled Papyrus into a headlock and noogie him while he shrieked in protest, still laughing all the time.

As their laughter faded, they flopped onto their backs, their arms almost touching, chuckles still bursting out of their chests a few times a minute. But soon even that had quieted down, and they were just lying there, staring up at the ceiling of what she finally realized was the Wishing Room, the glowing rocks twinkling down at them like she had always imagined the stars.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had come here. It had probably been before she got her job in the Guard. She had been here as a kid, with groups of friends or even alone. Everyone in Waterfall came here. It was tradition. It was normal. But she had never taken it seriously before.

It wasn’t like making a wish here was really going to change anything. It wasn’t going to set them free. Only _they_ could set them free, by getting one more human soul. One more human soul, and they would be out, and they wouldn’t need the Wishing Room any more.

But there were no humans here right now. No one to capture. Nothing to do. It was just her and Papyrus, sitting under the fake stars, and Undyne felt her mind wandering to all the things she had wished for when she was a kid.

She wanted a fun job. An exciting job. A job where she could make a real difference, where she could prove herself. She had that.

She wanted to see the surface. Well, that was still to come.

And she wanted a friend.

She wanted someone to train with. To play with. Someone who would challenge her, someone who could keep up with her. Someone who wouldn’t run away if she shouted too loud.

Someone loyal. Someone who would make her the best version of herself.

Asgore had filled that role, in some ways. For a long time. He had been one of her best friends as well as her tutor and her king. He had challenged her. He had helped her. He had made her better. But he hadn’t been what she was looking for. And for a long time, she had thought she would just have to accept that was the best she was going to get.

And then she met Papyrus.

Papyrus who followed her everywhere, no matter where she went, no matter what she did. Papyrus who stayed by her side, who was there whenever she needed him.

Papyrus who challenged her ideas of what it meant to be strong.

Papyrus who showed her kindness, even before she had learned how to return it.

Papyrus who could keep up with her, who could run and train and play with her, who could shout as loud as her and even louder.

Papyrus who loved her, unconditionally, no matter how different they were.

She tilted her head toward him, lying next to her on the floor, the twinkling rocks casting lights and shadows against his skull.

“Hey Papyrus,” she said, and though it was barely louder than a whisper, her words still echoed around the tiny room.

“YES, UNDYNE?” Papyrus replied, not taking his eyes off of the ceiling.

Undyne felt her face soften and her chest relax.

“You’re a cool best friend.”

She didn’t need to look to hear Papyrus’s head jerking to face her, to feel his eyes locked on her, wide and stunned. Then he cleared his throat.

“YES! YES I AM!” he said, like it should have been obvious, even though she could hear the way his voice squeaked. He paused. “THE … PERSON WHOSE COOL BEST FRIEND I AM WOULD BE YOU, RIGHT?”

Undyne smirked. “Right.”

Papyrus blinked. He blinked again, and again, and three more times after that. She could see the tears building in his sockets, see him trying his best not to let them fall.

“GOOD,” he said, his voice high-pitched and choked before he cleared his throat and nodded. “OF COURSE. OF COURSE IT WOULD BE YOU! THAT ONLY MAKES SENSE!”

Undyne bit back the laugh building in her throat. Papyrus glanced away, then back to her, a little hesitant, but with that smile still creeping onto the corners of his mouth.

“AND … YOU ARE ALSO A COOL BEST FRIEND, UNDYNE. THE COOL BEST FRIEND OF THE PERSON WHO IS ME.”

She stared at him, and he smiled a little wider, a little more sure. The smile of the person she could hardly remember living without. The person who she knew would stay by her side for the rest of their lives.

“Thanks.”

Then she reached over and gave him a light punch in the arm, laughing when he winced. She flopped back down on the ground, staring at the ceiling, and felt him settle right at her side.

She closed her eyes and listened to him breathing next to her, feeling the warm thrum of his soul.

It didn’t matter how they had found each other. It didn’t matter what she remembered, what she would _never_ remember. She had him, and he had her.

And that was all they needed.


End file.
